The CQC published the results of the 2021 adult inpatient survey yesterday which shows that the majority of patients have a good overall experience in our hospitals and are treated with dignity and respect. The national survey of adult inpatients experiences involved 134 NHS acute trusts in England. Responses were received from 62,235 patients who were in hospital in November 2021 which was a response rate of 39.5%.
For North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, on a scale of 0-10, our patients rated their experience 8.1 and reported 9.2 on being treated with dignity and respect.
Other headlines are:
- 503 patients responded to the survey which was a response rate of 41.23
- Our trust’s results were better than most trusts for 3 questions.
- Our trust’s results were worse than most trusts for 0 questions.
- Our trust’s results were about the same as other trusts for 44 questions.
From the 47 questions, the experiences that were better or somewhat better than other Trusts related to disruption from light at night, being able to get attention from staff and how well did hospital staff explain how an operation or procedure had gone.
Although the Trust received comparable scores with other trusts on the remainder of the questions, there has been a slight deterioration from last year on some of the scores, which is line with the national picture.
Jill Foster, Chief Nurse said, “It’s good to see we are better in some areas where we have given attention – for example we made changes to the lighting on the CIC site following feedback collected by our patient experience team. It’s also pleasing to note that at a time when we know we have been significantly challenged with staffing that we have been able to maintain a good experience for most of our patients in line with other trusts.
“We know that we need to improve communication with our patients and we are taking action to support this including increased investment in staffing and the recruitment of more volunteers to support the wards. We have also set up a patient experience forum to more systematically review feedback from our patients and identify improvements. Delivering safe, high quality care for our patients is our absolute priority, and I hope with these actions we will see a further improvement next year.”
The next inpatient survey will be conducted on patients who are in hospital later this year – around November 22.