Dignity and nutrition for older people

This review was a targeted inspection programme of NHS hospitals. It looked at whether older people are treated with respect and whether they get food and drink that meets their needs.

About the review

The review took place between March and June 2011 and used teams made up of CQC inspectors, a practising and experienced nurse and an ‘expert by experience’ – someone with experience of caring or receiving care, trained and supported by Age UK.

We inspected 100 NHS hospitals selected partly based on what we already know about their performance and partly at random. All the inspections were unannounced.

An independent panel of representatives from royal colleges, regulators, charities, advocates and other stakeholder organisations provided expert advice to the programme.

Download the reports

The individual reports give a snapshot of our findings at the time of our visit, rather than a complete picture of behaviour across an entire hospital. You can download the reports from our A–Z, which we have organised alphabetically by care service.

Dignity and nutrition inspection reports A–Z list

Our findings

We found that, of the 100 hospitals we inspected:

45 hospitals met both standards (they were ‘fully compliant’).
35 met both standards but needed to improve in one or both (they were ‘fully compliant, with improvements suggested’).
20 hospitals did not meet one or both standards (they were ‘non-compliant, with improvements required’).

Where we did find problems, some of the important issues were:

Patients’ privacy not being respected – for example, curtains and screens not being closed properly.
Call bells being put out of patients’ reach, or not answered soon enough.
Staff speaking to patients in a dismissive or disrespectful way.
Patients not being given the help they needed to eat.
Patients being interrupted during meals and having to leave their food unfinished.

We have brought together our findings in a national report.