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"Care and compassion on ward C51 at QMC"

About: Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust - Queen's Medical Centre Campus / General medicine

(as a carer),

I visited my father in law on ward C51 today.

I'd just finished a day as a senior manager in the NHS (not QMC) feeling tired and anxious about my father in law's condition. My mother in law's comment during his last admission in October has stayed in my mind... the nurses are fantastic, there just aren't enough of them.

The chief nursing officer's reference to nurses focussing on care and compassion has also triggered many thoughts. I have spent 27 years in nursing and believe the greatest gift we give our patients is time and to demonstrate care and compassion nurses need time!

Although nurses on C51 clearly struggle to have time with each individual patient, when they did they showed care and compassion that should make them proud.

I'd particularly like to thank Keith, my father in law's primary nurse. He was friendly, informative, caring with good humour, essential ingredients for a good nurse. He also involved the family in my father in law's care, which is so important in my opinion.

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Responses

Response from Nottingham University Hospitals Trust 11 years ago
Submitted on 03/01/2013 at 08:23
Published on Care Opinion at 08:32


Thank you for getting in touch with us to share the experience of your father’s recent care at QMC.

In recent years we have spent much time at organisational and ward level on our values and behaviours (how we do things). Compassion in care is one of our core values. The way we think of it is imagining how we would want our loved ones to be treated and cared for.

It is reassuring to hear, via feedback such as yours, where we are getting things right so that we can feed back to colleagues who are doing a good job when it comes to caring for patients and their families. We equally encourage people to feedback so we can learn when we don’t do things so well.

Over the last few months we launched ‘Caring around the Clock’ (CATC), our new approach to hourly rounding. Rolled out on over two thirds of our wards, CATC is already making a difference to how much time nurses are spending on patient care. It involves nurses checking on the basic care needs of all patients, hourly, between 8am and 11pm. It's helping to better anticipate our patients' needs and reinforce our commitment to ensuring our patients feel cared for, safe and confident in their care. Through CATC, and indeed our Trust-wide values programme, we are confident that we will continually improve the consistency of care we deliver to our patients so that our care is the best it can be on all of our wards, every day.

I hope your father-in-law is making a speedy recovery and is back to good health. I will ensure your kind words are passed on to the ward team, including Keith.

Caron Swinscoe - Clinical Lead

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