Last year Ealing Hospital NHS Trust pledged to make improving the experience of patients during their stay in hospital a top priority. Therefore, in October 2007 a two year programme of improvements were commenced.
The Trust, which has recently received disappointing results in the national patients’ survey, has been focussing on ways to ensure that patients feel they are better cared for, and that their views and comments are being listened to and acted upon.
Trust Chief Executive, Julie Lowe, said: “We believe that the changes we are implementing now will improve the way we provide services to patients and make patients feel they are part of the decision making process in our hospital.
“We have set up an Improving Patient Experience Group led by our Director of Nursing, Paul Reeves, and made up of staff, patients and Trusts Governors, to explore what we are doing right, and where we need to focus on to make things better.”
Paul Reeves said: “The national patients’ survey is carried out once a year and the results published this week relate to a survey of patients from last August. We are now carrying out surveys of patients on our wards every week to gain up-to-date information from them which we can act on quickly.
“So far the main concerns have centred around cleanliness, food, and the quality of communication – both written and verbal. We are now drawing up a series of action plans to address these issues and are publicising to our staff and patients what their concerns are and how we are going to do something about them.
This includes a banner in the hospital main reception showing what major concerns patients have and what we are doing to address them. For instance, patients have commented that staff do not always clean their hands with gel. We have now put gel on every bed and Matrons are driving home the CleanYourHands messages to remind staff.
“We are also planning to have action months on specific topics in the hospital – on cleaning hands, on improving the environment, on reducing night time noise and disruption.
“We are hopeful that this work will go a long way to ensuring that we have more favourable results from the 2008 national patients’ survey.”
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