Enter and View: Countess of Chester Hospital - ward 42 Cathedral Ward (cardiology)

This is an enter and view report conducted by Healthwatch Cheshire West 1 December, 2016. During the visit Healthwatch representatives spoke to people, which included a mix of staff and patients. It is unclear if the visit was announced or unannounced.

Overall the ward was found to be operating to a good standard. Patients seemed to be happy with the care they were receiving.

Recommendations were made as part of this report. No response from the ward manager has been attached.

Summary of recommendations:

Staffing levels, particularly healthcare assistants, should be increased to enhance the basic care of patients and enable nursing staff to concentrate even more on their role.

Two long-term patients, who were living with dementia, were awaiting discharge but there appeared nowhere for them to go at present -thus reducing the capacity of the ward to take new admissions. Measures to increase capacity in the system extend beyond the hospital‟s remit and all partners need to be working together with an even more co-ordinated approach to budget sharing and problem solving.

We were told that the staff buy dental tablets (for patients with false teeth) from their own money. If families are not able to provide these, then in the interest of patient hygiene and dignity perhaps the hospital pharmacy could be given a small budget to supply these routinely.

We question the desirability of keeping filing cabinets in a ward bay with patients. Better solutions to storage should be found.

The quality and flavour of food was an issue for some patients. Our feeling is that an evaluation of the effectiveness of current systems for getting patient and family feedback on food and menus should be considered and if the catering staff have no time to spend with patients talking about their experience of the food, consider recruiting volunteers to undertake this role.

Cardiology cover should be re-assessed out of hours and at weekends.

Consider for the future, new roles such as Associate Physician which by increasing capacity in the medical team could help to progress career routes for others to registrar and consultant positions.