QVH continues to receive top marks from patients

Thursday 21st May 2015

QVH continues to receive top marks from patients

The findings of the latest national NHS inpatient survey show that QVH continues to achieve some of the best feedback from patients in the country.

The annual national survey of inpatients at all NHS hospital trusts in England covers all aspects of patients’ care and treatment. The findings help the NHS to continually improve, enabling hospitals to see how they are doing year-on-year and how they compare with others.

QVH scored significantly better than other trusts on 45 of the 62 questions asked, about the same on 16 and worse than average on only one.

Areas where QVH scored particularly highly were the questions about the hospital’s doctors and nurses, care and treatments, and patients’ experience overall.

QVH achieved the top scores in the country for ten of the questions, including questions around:

  • Patients’ overall experience of the hospital
  • The emotional support patients received from hospital staff
  • Whether staff did all they could to control pain
  • Whether there were enough nurses on duty
  • The cleanliness of hospital rooms and wards.

The only question on which QVH scored worse than average was about the choice of hospital food. The hospital is making improvements to the quality and choice of food for patients one if its top three priorities for the coming year.

Speaking about the results, QVH chief executive Richard Tyler said: “At QVH we strive for excellence in all we do. It is therefore very encouraging to receive such positive feedback from patients who once again rate their experience at our hospital as the best in the country. This is thanks to the commitment and professionalism of our staff. The feedback on the choice of hospital food is very valuable and we will be working very hard to improve this.”

Giving more detail about the plans to improve food, QVH director of nursing Jo Thomas said: “Providing appetising, nutritious food to a wide range of patients at varying levels of recovery in hospital is a challenge. However, we must listen and learn from the feedback and strive to improve the way we produce, choose and serve meals to our patients.

“We have made patient satisfaction with our food one of our top priorities for 2015/16 and the board will be monitoring progress closely throughout the year. We will begin by gathering more detailed feedback from our patients about the changes they would like made to the food we provide, paying particular attention to the views of patients with swallowing difficulties or burns.”

The inpatient survey was sent to 830 patients who stayed overnight at QVH in June, July or August 2014. It was completed by 405, a response rate of 49%, compared to a national average of 45%. The full results are available at www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RPC/surveys.