Enter and view: St Peter's Hospital emergency department and same day emergency care
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This is an Enter and View report by Healthwatch Surrey. Healthwatch representatives visited the St Peter's Hospital emergency department to assess the care being provided there.
This was a pre-arranged programme of visits. There was a site visit with the head of nursing on 22 August. Following the meeting there was agreement to visit the emergency department (ED), Ambulatory Majors (AM), and same day emergency care (SDEC). By doing 4 visits it ensured that the ED was seen on different times of day and on different days of the week. Each of the visits lasted 2 hours.
Key findings
• People are generally understanding of the pressures on the NHS staff and so are not expecting major changes to be made.
• Staff attitudes are generally very good, most people told us staff had shown kindness and a caring attitude.
• Patients would benefit from clear, consistent signage on the hospital site to help them navigate to the right place. Some people found it difficult to find their way to Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC).
• Patients would benefit from better management of the queue for the navigation nurse in the Emergency Department (ED) at busy times. On 1 of our visits people were waiting 50-60 minutes to see the navigation nurse.
• Most people across ED and SDEC knew what was going to happen next, although there was some frustration with waiting times for test results.
• People’s experiences were mainly positive across the course of our visits however, they were more negative during our visits at busier times.
• More could be done to encourage patients to share feedback directly – the Viewpoint posters in ED, QR code in SDEC, and PALS details were not very visible.
• Not everyone knew about the availability of refreshments in SDEC.
• We heard about some issues with parking.
There are recommendations in this report
- Emergency Department (ED) - queuing, communication on waiting times, clear uniforms
- Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) - nutrition and hydration, reducing plastic waste
- Estates - viewpoint posters and terminals for feedback
There are no follow up actions in this report.