Good standards of cleanliness at Derriford Hospital

Standards of cleanliness at Derriford Hospital have been rated as 95.93%, according to a report published last week by the NHS Commissioning Board.

A team of 16 patient assessors carried out a two day assessment at Derriford Hospital, looking at standards in four key areas. Over this period they assessed how the environment supports patient’s privacy dignity and wellbeing, food, cleanliness and general maintenance.

The new system for assessing the quality of the patient environment, Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE) was introduced last year replacing the old Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) inspections. The change is more than just the name, with the assessments being made solely by patient representatives who are focused on the role that environment plays in the wellbeing of patients.

The team of patient assessors was made up from members of Healthwatch Plymouth and a shadow governor. Supported by clinical and non-clinical staff from the Trust, they visited over 25 separate areas of the hospital, including wards, departments, entrances, public toilets and car parks following set criteria to complete their assessment. The team also sampled the patient’s lunch on six wards and spoke to patients on the wards to gain real-time feedback.

Liz McGuffog, Service Lead for Hotel Services at Derriford Hospital, said: “We are pleased that our cleanliness has been scored at 95.93% - this is a reflection of the hard work and dedication of our cleaning and nursing staff who work so hard to ensure a safe environment for our patients.

“Over the last year we have continued to work hard on improving and enhancing our patient meal experience and this has been reflected in an improved score for this category, by over 10%. We and our service provider Serco have done much to improve and revamp our patient menus to enhance the nutritional intake for patients and provide healthy eating and energy dense food choices.

“We also work with our wards to ensure that meal times are protected, those patients who need it are offered help with eating, our red tray and lid systems are consistently implemented and the environment in which the meals are served is calm and relaxing.”

In the patient-led assessment, Derriford Hospital improved its scores on last year across all four categories and scored 95.93% for cleanliness, 89.74% for food, 81.17% for privacy, dignity and wellbeing and 84.51% for condition, appearance and maintenance.

Disappointingly, the hospital’s scores were below the national averages in three categories and the assessment highlighted areas where improvements need to be made.

Beverley Cox, Deputy Director of Nursing said: “Overall, it was a very positive assessment, reinforcing the importance of environment and provides a clear measure of areas we are getting it right and areas for improvement.

“We will also be doing some focussed work collaboratively on nutrition and will be running a campaign to support mealtimes for our patients.

“We also recognise that our privacy and dignity score is lower than we would want it to be. This is likely to have been driven by not having enough room around each bed in the six-bedded bays and not always having a dedicated room on a ward for patients and staff to talk in private. We have an ongoing programme of works, where we are refurbishing and upgrading our wards with the aim of reducing the number of beds in each ward to help improve privacy and dignity standards.”