Enter and View report: The Atrium at the Louisa Martindale Building August 2023

In summary:

A number of positive findings were identified during their visit:

• Open, clean, bright, welcoming.
• Lots of signage for Wi-Fi.
• Phone charging stations.
• Good variety of seating.
• Inside was a very clean and well-ordered, safe space.
• Excellent seating that seems to accommodate most needs.
• Booths with high sides to create a sense of privacy – good for when people have received upsetting news or for those who are neurodivergent.
• Comfortable chairs.
• Variety of seating arrangements.
• Acoustics really good. Felt calm and not too loud even when very busy.
• All calm organised and clutter-free.

Some suggestions were made for improvements:

• Signage not as clear as it could be - we suggest bigger signs above doorways for the lifts and toilets.
• There is a map of the hospital layout on your left when you first enter the building. It points to the Louisa Martindale building. We felt it could highlight where you are i.e. “you are here” more clearly/in more of a bold font. We also felt that the visual of the lift levels next to the map could be clearer. i.e. again having a “you are here” more boldly, maybe an arrow or some kind of link between the building location on the map and which floor you are on, on the lift diagram.
• We didn’t see a welcoming sign in any other languages.
• There could be more hand gels in the café (we only saw one).
• It would be good to have hand gels where there are touch screens i.e. at the check-in screens and the heritage screen.
• Just outside the main entrance (not on the street), there were a lot of cigarette butts and 3 staff members smoking. There was no ‘no smoking’ signage. We suggest there is more no smoking signage directly outside the hospital entrance.
• Fire exit signage could be better – confusing signage regarding fire exits in the corridor leading to the Heritage Chapel. Green signs indicate escape route, but locked door has sign stating not a fire exit. There are locked doors on the left of the corridor which appear to lead to the fire exit on the street. There is an emergency panel 6 which advises it needs to be smashed to unlock the doors. Did not seem to make sense and could be dangerous in a real emergency.
• Attention needed to the outside entrance area, not very calming due to smoke and cigarette butts.

What is Enter and View?

Part of the local Healthwatch programme is to carry out Enter and View visits. Local Healthwatch representatives carry out these visits to health and social care services to find out how they are being run and make recommendations where there are areas for improvement.

The Health and Social Care Act allows local Healthwatch authorised representatives to observe service delivery and talk to service users, their families and carers on premises such as hospitals, residential homes, GP practices, dental surgeries, optometrists and pharmacies. Enter and View 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 they do well.

Healthwatch Brighton and Hove has worked in partnership with our local hospital trust for several years to conduct regular Enter and View visits. We call these visits to wards and other units 'Environmental Care Audits'.  The visits are an extension of a national programme of audits called PLACE – Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment which involve local people (known as patient assessors) going into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment supports the provision of clinical care, assessing such things as privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance and, more recently, the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with dementia or with a disability. Healthwatch will be supporting out trust to undertake their PLACE assessment later this year.