"OVERCROWDED, DIRTY AND SMELLY"

I am very sorry to hear about your experiences at Leighton hospital. We would appreciate the opportunity to discuss your concerns directly with you and this can be facilitated via the customer care team on 01270 278098. Your comments are contrary to our usual feedback so I would be keen to understand more about the specifics of what you have observed so that we can take corrective action. If that is not possible, then I would like to briefly respond to some of the points you have raised to provide you with some facts that will provide assurance around some of the issues raised by you. Firstly, I was aware that there were some offensive smells in the area of Leighton hospital recently. This is rare and has now resolved but did affect a wide area of Crewe and I can assure you that it was nothing at all to do with the hospital. Most of our wards are designed to have 32 patients, which is not unusual in many NHS hospitals and we never go over the number of patients that the wards are designed to cater for. All wards have an annual declutter programme to reduce unnecessary equipment and two wards are year are refurbished, with part of the refurbishment including additional optimising storage solutions. We have a strict policy not to move patients with dementia from their base ward, unless this is required for a clinical need, where that is then in the best interests of the patient and we audit adherence to this policy. We also have a dementia lead nurse who supports ward staff with patients who have dementia. All wards measure their patient acuity / dependency to determine the numbers of nurses they need to meet their patients’ needs and this is discussed with the director of nursing to ensure extra funding for nurses is made available where needed. This year, in April 2014, £1.4 million was invested for additional ward staff. The hospital invests significantly into its nursing workforce every year and have embarked on a very successful overseas recruitment strategy to ensure we have the correct numbers of nurses on our wards. This strategy supports our local recruitment of newly qualified and experienced nurses. All wards identify the number of staff required for each shift and the number actually working on the ward. This information is updated every day on the ward’s staffing board and our results clearly illustrate that the vast majority of time we have the staff in place that should be in place. We ask our patients every month for their thoughts about our food and cleanliness in the hospital and regularly receive positive feedback. I do not understand the MRSA vaccination comment that is mentioned as there is no such thing that we are aware of but we would be keen to hear from you further so we can ascertain what the issue was. We have very good infection prevention and control policies and we regularly audit compliance against these. Compliance rates are high which supports the Trust’s very low healthcare acquired infection rates and we are very proud of these. I strongly urge you to contact me so that I can establish where your specific concerns relate to as I am very keen to ensure we can act appropriately in relation to your feedback. Many thanks Jayne Hartley, Deputy Director of Nursing and Quality.