Enter & View Visit to Champneys Ward and Dialysis Services
What we did
There had been recent changes to renal services at St George's Hospital in response to findings of the Care Quality Commission's Report from November 2016. These services were relocated from the Knightsbridge Wing quickly and the relocation involved a dispersal of in-patient, dialysis and clinic services to separate locations on the hospital site, and increasing the number of patients using satellite dialysis services off-site provided by a third-party or another NHS Trust.
In the light of these changes, we visited the different parts of the service and to find out about patients’ experiences of services.
On the first visit, the E&V team spoke to senior clinical staff; on later visits the team spoke to nineteen patients: eleven in-patients on Champneys Ward and eight dialysis patients (six in the new St George’s Dialysis Unit (SDU), a purpose-built mobile unit located in the hospital grounds and two on Champneys Ward).
The team planned to:
- Identify examples of good working practice.
- Observe patients and staff and their surroundings.
- Capture the experience of patients, and relatives and visitors and any ideas they might have for improvement.
- Ask patients who had previously used the service in Knightsbride Wing about how the service changes had affected them.
Key Findings
The overall impression from interviews with 11 patients and observations while on the ward was that inpatient care on Champneys Ward is provided by dedicated and caring staff who are perceived by the vast majority of the patients as being able to provide them with the information, physical care and emotional support that they need.
Most of the negative comments we received were about changed dialysis appointments and the unreliability of the ambulance transport service.
Our recommendations:
We made a number of recommendations for St George's Hospital to consider. The following are a few highlights.
- Ensure that all bed curtains are large enough to ensure privacy and dignity at all times.
- Investigate whether there are ways to improve communication with the wider team.
- Improve information provided for patients coming from out of London.
- Review transport arrangements urgently and set appropriate standards for notification to patients about collection for treatment, maximum waiting times at the end of treatment, journey times.
- Review the “first come first served” system for putting people onto dialysis machines. We saw a system of appointment times at Colliers Wood which appears to be working well for most people.
What happens next
We shared our report with senior staff in charge of the wards. They looked at our findings and recommendations and produced a formal response and action plan about how they could make a few changes to improve patient experiences. You can download their response below.
We also shared the report with Wandsworth Clinical Commissioning Group who pay for and make decisions about the service. They have used it to inform their own understanding of patient experiences and future work with the Trust on how the service works.
Download the reports here:
If you need this report in a different format, please e-mail:
enquiries@healthwatchwandsworth.co.uk or call 020 8516 7767
