Enter and View report: Fracture Clinic at Royal Sussex County Hospital August 2024
On 28th August 2024, one volunteer representative and one Healthwatch staff member conducted an Enter & view of the Fracture Clinic at the Royal Sussex County Hospital.
We decided to visit after receiving feedback regarding issues with booking appointments and outpatient letters.
The team talked with five patients and their relatives and asked for their views on their experience of the Fracture Clinic including appointment booking, imaging, communication and appointment letters, the virtual fracture clinic, and their experience overall. They were also free to discuss any aspects raised by the patients they met.
You can read our report which is available at the end of this page.
In summary:
A number of positive findings were identified during their visit:
- The clinical care, the efficiency of the service, and the environment (aside from signage) were praised by patients
- Patient praise for staff awareness of neurodiversity
- Environment felt calm, clean, organised, and tidy
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Different types of seating for different needs. Low softer seating and high-backed chairs with arm rests
Some suggestions were made for improvements:
- Improvements to the booking system
- Staff IT training to reduce the chance of mistakes on appointment letters
- Clearer signage to find the clinic
- More parking information on letters
- Considerations for patients with dementia (such as clearer distinction between walls, doors, and floors)
- A hearing loop at reception
- Handrails along corridors
- A larger clock in the waiting area
- Increase staff resources such as computers
Patient feedback was positive overall:
"Although there were issues with the signage, it has only been a good experience. Good efficient service"
- Patient 1
"I am autistic and don’t like enclosed spaces. But the imaging team has always been very supportive, although it’s a difficult process, they have always been aware of my needs and made it as easy as possible. Staff are aware, engaged, and supportive of neurodiversity."
- Patient 2
The benefits of our visits - and our thanks to staff
Our Enter and View visits are an excellent way for the trust to receive feedback from a patients' perspective on the physical environment of their hospital wards. Many of our findings and recommendations can be easily implemented bringing benefit to hundreds of future patients and staff. Our local trust has actively welcomed and supported these visits and we are grateful to them and everyone involved for their collaboration.
Downloads
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 supports our trust to undertake their PLACE assessments annually.
