Teams at the Royal United Hospital in Bath have been praised for treating patients with kindness, dignity and respect.
Photo © RUH Bath
The praise comes in the results of a recently published survey, which places the RUH Trust ninth in the country for overall patient experience for general acute and combined trusts.
The national Adult Inpatient Survey is an annual piece of research carried out by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England.
The survey looks at the experiences of people who stayed at least one night in hospital as an inpatient in November 2023.
The RUH results of the 2023 survey showed that patients felt they were treated with respect and dignity and said that staff took into account their individual need.
In both those questions, the RUH performed better than most trusts across the country.
Cara Charles-Barks, RUH Chief Executive, said: “These are really positive results and closely reflect our goal of ensuring the people we care for feel safe, understood and always welcome.
“It is clear from our results that our staff are consistently delivering the highest quality care, ensuring we provide our patients with the very best experience while they are with us.
“We are not complacent though – we are always looking at what we can be doing to further improve the experience of our patients to act on what matters most to them and will be focusing on the areas of the report where we can do better.”
Other aspects where the RUH was rated as better than others showed that patients included:
- Patients felt included in discussions with medical staff about their care
- Patients were treated with kindness and compassion
- Patients were able to get enough help from staff to wash and keep clean
The RUH significantly improved on the 2022 result for patients feeling there were enough nurses on duty to care for them.
Areas of the survey where patients said the RUH could improve included overnight room temperatures, explaining how to take medicines on discharge and making sure patients know what to expect next in their care on leaving the hospital.
