Observations of care - Folkington ward, Eastbourne District General Hospital and MacDonald ward, Conquest Hospital provided by East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (ESHT)

During a two week period during November 2016, Healthwatch East Sussex’s Authorised Representatives (ARs) visited two wards in the Trust to observe the care frail elderly patients receive. The visits were unplanned and were designed to capture the interactions between staff and patients as a visitor or relative might experience.

Overall, Healthwatch East Sussex's observations and comments were largely very positive about the aspects of care they observed, with most describing their findings as ‘very good in lots of ways’, however there was a strong sense reflected in observations that patients received little stimulation and would benefit from some level of activity.

They also felt that there would be benefit to patients from the development of consistent approaches to delivering good dementia care across both wards.

The key recommendations from this work include:

• Improved staff leadership and sharing good practice, staff at all levels of experience on both wards to share good practice and learning.
• A meaningful programme of stimulating activities to be devised for patients that is achievable for staff to deliver.
• To review staff training with a focus on what good dementia care looks like. This should include not only personal care, dignity and respect but also atmosphere, approach and attitude, together with how staff talk to patients; and
• The Enter and View activity should be repeated in May 2017.