Enter and View: Beech Frailty Unit King George Hospital
Healthwatch Redbridge conducted an Enter and View at Beech Frailty Unit to speak with patients, relatives and carers to understand what works well within the ward and what could improve patient experience.
What is Enter & View?
Part of the local Healthwatch programme is to carry out Enter & View visits. Enter & View visits are conducted by a small team of trained volunteers/staff, who are prepared as ‘Authorised Representatives’ to conduct visits to health and social care premises.
Enter & View is the opportunity for Healthwatch Redbridge to:
- Enter publicly funded health and social care premises to see and hear first- hand experiences about the service.
- Observe how the service is delivered, often by using a themed approach.
- Collect the views of service users (patients and residents) at the point of service delivery.
- Collect the views of carers and relatives through evidence-based feedback by observing the nature and quality of services.
- Report to providers, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), Local Authorities, Commissioners, Healthwatch England and other relevant partners.
Enter & View visits are carried out as ‘announced visits’ where arrangements are made with the service provider, or, if certain circumstances dictate, as ‘unannounced’ visits.
Enter & View (E&V) visits can happen if people tell us there is a problem with a service but, equally, they can occur when services have a good reputation – so we can learn about and share examples of what a service does well.
Recommendations
- Staff should refer to patient notes when answering questions to ensure consistency, and escalate any questions they can not answer.
- All patients should be informed of their discharge plan on admission to the ward. Planning discharge at an early stage will help staff members to anticipate any problems and put appropriate support in place.
- Signage for the toilets should be improved to include pictures as well as text to make it accessible for all patients.
- Where patients have relatives visiting, they should be encouraged to bring clothes for patients and patients should be encouraged to change into these.
- The ward should ensure that the complaints procedure is visible and available for all patients. The procedure should be available in a range of accessible formats.
