Fir Trees Independent Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness. They respected patients’ privacy and dignity. They understood the individual needs of patients and supported patients to understand and manage their care, treatment or condition. Staff involved patients in care planning and risk assessment and actively sought their feedback on the quality of care provided. Staff informed and involved families and carers appropriately.

We have not awarded this service a score for Caring.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Caring.

The service always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

Staff attitudes and behaviours when interacting with patients showed that they were discreet, respectful and responsive, providing patients with help, emotional support and advice at the time they needed it. Patients and relatives were positive about the staff and told us they were kind and caring. Carers champions were displayed on notice boards with carer drop-ins displayed.

Staff supported patients to understand and manage their care, treatment or condition. We saw staff making time to listen to patients. Patients said staff treated them well and behaved appropriately towards them.

Staff directed patients to other services when appropriate and, if required, supported them to access those services.

Staff understood the individual needs of patients, including their personal, cultural, social and religious needs.

Staff said they could raise concerns about disrespectful, discriminatory or abusive behaviour or attitudes towards patients without fear of consequences.

Staff maintained the confidentiality of information about patients.

The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

The service made adjustments for disabled patients – for example, by ensuring disabled patient’s access to premises and by meeting patients’ specific communication needs. Assessments completed by the occupational therapist addressed mobility and transfer assessments for patients that needed them. There was access for patients with mobility issues, and all rooms were on the ground floor.

Staff ensured that patients could obtain information on treatments, local services, patient rights, how to complain and so on. Information was displayed throughout the hospital.

The information provided was in a form accessible to the particular patient group; for example, easy-read formats had been developed.

Staff made information leaflets available in languages spoken by patients.

Managers ensured that staff and patients had easy access to interpreters and/or signers if needed.

Patients had a choice of food to meet the dietary requirements of religious and ethnic groups and to account for allergies and intolerances.

Staff ensured that patients had access to appropriate spiritual support.

Patients had 1-1 time with staff. Patients were taken out individually and in groups into the community. Staff spoke with patients to find out what they liked doing and supported them to complete their aspirations. One example of this was where fishing had been arranged. Success stories were displayed throughout the service and photos of activities the patients had participated in. These included golf at a driving range and football sessions.

All individual patient needs were assessed on admission, and care plans individually reflected the care being provided by staff. This included any additional needs people had, for example people with a learning disability, autistic people and people with long term physical health conditions.

The service promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment, and wellbeing.

Staff provided lots of group activities and therapies and sought feedback from patients regarding the effectiveness of these sessions. For example, they had a knitting group, fishing was available, and patients shopped, budgeted, and cooked a meal for others at the hospital. Patients had access to community activities and were encouraged to participate.

They provided groups for carers to visit and have a coffee and meet other carers. Carers told us there were no restrictions on visiting, however, they would be mindful about visiting at mealtimes. Patients had access to friends and family, and families were consulted about their care and treatment where the patient had agreed.

Patients told us they were supported and encouraged to gain further independence. They had choice and control, and we saw staff had encouraged individuals to make their own decisions. The service made time to find out what patients enjoyed doing and tailored their independence and pathway in rehabilitation accordingly.

They had a co-production policy that set out the provider’s organisational commitment to working in equal partnership with people they supported. This was for patients, families and carers across all aspects of their services to design, deliver, and improve their services.

An occupational therapist completed functional assessments, which patients were fully consulted and involved in, and this was documented in the records we looked at.

They had developed a training package to look at supporting team leaders to help staff co-produce meaningful independence goals that went beyond “doing tasks.” An example of this was where an individual had made a choice to go on holiday and some of the goals agreed were money management, shopping for their own clothes / toiletries, researching holidays by type, and what documentation they would need.

Staff explained patients’ rights under the Mental Health Act, and this was monitored and documented for each patient. Patients had access to regular advocacy support. Patients were invited and encouraged to be involved in their ward meetings.

The service listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff responded to people’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern, or distress.

Staff were aware of and dealt with any specific risk issues, such as falls or pressure ulcers and incidents of self-harm or neglect, and care planned for these accordingly. Staff identified and responded to changing risks to, or posed by, patients.

Staff used de-escalation techniques to reduce the need for physical interventions when patient behaviours became heightened. All staff had access to alarms that were used to respond to any immediate needs or incidents on the unit.

We saw staff listening and responding to patients during our visit. Staff made time to speak with patients and promoted privacy by speaking with patients in a separate room where needed. Patients had one to one time with their named nurse.

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centered care.

Staff felt respected, supported and valued. Staff felt positive and proud about working for the provider and their team. Staff had access to support for their own physical and emotional health needs through an occupational health service and this was available on an internal intranet page which all staff had access to.

The hospital responded to’ individual staff needs by providing flexible working hours and tailored adjustments.

The provider recognised staff success within the service – for example, through staff awards. They celebrated these successes by posting these on their website.

Staff appraisals included conversations about career development and how it could be supported. Leadership training was available for managers and nurses through attendance at the Impactful Leadership Course. Nurses had completed training on trauma informed care and psychosocial interventions aimed at improving mental health, functioning and quality of life for their patients.

All staff at the hospital had access to a “U Matter” page on their intranet: this provided information to staff about physical support, financial, emotional, mental and social support. They rewarded staff at the ‘amazing people’s awards’. Staff had access to occupational health services, and they provided support information in relation to the menopause, pregnancy, loss and miscarriage.