Priory Hospital Norwich

Updated 6 August 2021

The Priory Hospital Norwich is an independent hospital and is part of the Priory Group (Partnerships in Care). The hospital is an inpatient acute mental health unit for adults of working age. The hospital has the capacity to care for up to a total of 44 patients. There are two adult wards open: Woodlands Ward (10 females) and Redwood Ward (12 males).

The adult service was last inspected on 30 September and 1 October 2019 following an escalation of concerns. This inspection resulted in urgent enforcement action that restricted patient admissions to the service and placed several conditions on the providers registration to ensure the safety of patients. The provider made the decision to close for a period of 6 months and the acute adults ward closed for 8 months until the service re-opened in June 2020. The restriction on admissions has now been removed. Since the hospital has re-opened the managers have made significant improvements to develop a positive culture in the hospital by promoting person centred care, learning and transparency.

The hospital is registered to carry out the following regulated activities:

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury
• Assessment or medical treatment for persons detained under the 1983 Act

What people who use the service say

We spoke with nine patients. Most patients spoke highly of staff and told us they felt safe on the ward and that staff were supportive and caring. However, one patient told us the attitude of one or two staff was uncaring and insensitive in the way they spoke to patients.

Five out of nine patients told us they were given a tour of the ward upon admission and eight patients told us they could access a wide range of activities seven days a week that included badminton, mindfulness, nature walks and arts and crafts.

Seven patients told us they felt confident to raise a complaint and one patient told us they had made a complaint, and this had been resolved quickly.

Patients told us they engaged in twice weekly medicine reviews, in collaboration with their psychiatrist, and all nine patients told us they were given information regarding their medicine and its side effects. However, one patient felt the review meetings were not private enough due to the number of staff present.

Feedback from carers was overall positive. Three out of four carers told us they felt their relatives were safe and were very happy with the care their relatives received. One carer said the staff were exceptional and everyone they had spoken to had given them time to ask questions and the care was excellent and staff superb. However, one carer told us they had not been fully involved in their relative’s care and had not been given information on how to provide feedback about the service.

Updated 6 August 2021

Our rating of this location improved. We rated it as requires improvement because:

• Staff did not always document the presentation of risk and nor did they create contingency plans when patients went on leave from the ward. Records did not always demonstrate that staff reviewed the outcome of leave. This meant that potential risks for patients might not be thoroughly considered and mitigated.
• The service did not always manage medicines safely. Whilst the provider had successfully identified some medicine errors it was not yet clear if the learning from this had been embedded to prevent the same happening in the future.
• Access to a clinical psychologist was limited to one day a week which reduced the ability to provide therapeutic interventions in line with best practice.
• The service did not maintain consistent COVID-19 cleaning records of high touch areas.
• The service did not provide masks with a clear area over staff mouths to facilitate communication for patients with hearing impairment.
• The service had not ensured that all the ligature risks were recorded on the environmental ligature risk assessment despite recently being updated which meant that staff might not be aware of these risks and how they should be managed.

However:

• Staff managed safety incidents well and had improved reporting of incidents and sharing of lessons learnt. Staff engaged in clinical audits to evaluate the quality of care they provided.
• Staff minimised the use of restrictive practices and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.
• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and understood the individual needs of patients. They actively involved patients, families and carers in care decisions.
• Patients were supported to live healthier lives and were offered a variety of activities seven days a week.
• The service was well led and the leadership of the hospital had improved since the last inspection. The governance processes had been strengthened although there was scope for further improvement based on the areas identified at this inspection.
• Staff at the hospital felt respected, valued and supported by the management team and we observed a positive culture during our visit. Staff described the managers as open and as having promoted a culture of openness and learning.

Updated 6 August 2021