Nuffield Health Exeter Hospital

Ratings - Services for children & young people

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

The date of assessment 25 February 2026.

Nuffield Health Exeter Hospital is an independent hospital within the Nuffield Health group and has provided services in Exeter since 1963. The hospital offers outpatient and surgical services to adults, alongside a limited range of services for children and young people. It provides a range of some non‑complex, non‑cosmetic surgical procedures for young people aged 16 and 17. Children under 16 years old can be seen for some outpatient consultations only. In December 2025 there were 35 outpatient appointments for children and younger adults.

We undertook this assessment due to the timescale since the last inspection in 2016. We assessed all quality statements from the safe, effective, responsive, caring and well-led key questions.

Surgery was the core service at this location, and we will refer to this report and outpatients and diagnostic imaging for more information.

We rated the service as good. Staff described a collaborative and supportive culture, with effective leadership and teamwork. Staff understood how to report incidents and told us learning was shared across teams. They had access to a range of electronic training resources and were up to date with mandatory training. However, staff who provide care and treatment to children and young people were not trained to the recommended level of safeguarding children training as directed by national guidance.

People's experience of this service

There were no children or younger people receiving services during our site visit. We have used feedback given to the service and provided to us following our assessment.

Feedback about children and young people’s (CYP) outpatient services was shared with us following the site visit. January 2026 outpatient feedback showed consistently positive responses across all age groups. For example, the question ‘the doctor and nurse listened to what I had to say’ received the highest score across all age ranges. Overall feedback was very positive and demonstrated staff valued and responded to the views of children and young people. Feedback from March 2025 to December 2025 was also positive the lowest score was a ‘3’ which showed a neutral face. Some of the children had drawn pictures for the staff and pictures of these were shared with us.