Plympton Health Centre

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

We looked for evidence that the service involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

At our last assessment in July 2015, we rated this key question as Good. At this assessment, the rating remains unchanged.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

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

There were arrangements to promote patients’ privacy. Staff we spoke with understood Gillick competency (Gillick competency refers to the legal ability of a child under 16 to consent to medical treatment without parental consent, provided they have sufficient understanding and intelligence to appreciate the treatment's nature, risks, and alternatives) and there was a process to ensure young adults had control over their own privacy and the amount of parental involvement in managing their care and support.

GPs had a designated patient lists to ensure continuity of care. 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.

People’s personal, cultural, social, religious and equality characteristics needs were understood and met. People’s communication needs were met to enable them to be fully involved in their care. For example, self-check in screens at all sites could be translated into other languages.

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

Staff helped people and their carers to access advocacy and community-based services.

We saw that the service provides clear, accessible information on care and treatment options, supporting shared decision-making in consultations, including providing written information and signposting to other services and support of self-management tools.

Meeting minutes reviewed showed that clinicians routinely discussed and documented people’s consent, capacity, and involvement in decisions.

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.

There was a system for appointment triage that ensured people with immediate needs had access to services. Staff we spoke with knew the process for referral to emergency support, including mental health crisis teams.

The service provided an additional service for acute respiratory services, their urgent care team (UTC) provided extra hours for people during winter to help prevent them needing hospital admission or utilising 111.

The service was aware of an incident in secondary care settings, which did not enable people to timely access care and treatment. They identified the wait time in the local hospital accident and emergency (AE) department, was 10 hours to be triaged. The service had a cohort of people who contacted the service because of self-discharging themselves from AE, without being seen. On this specific day the service had adapted and had triaged over 300 patients, which resulted in many of them being consulted with and receiving care and treatment.

Musculoskeletal (refers to bones, muscles and joints) services were provided. This service consisted of The First Contact Physiotherapy (FCP) service and the GP with special interest (GPwSI) led intermediate care. The FCP service allowed for rapid access to experienced physiotherapists who formed part of the UTC. All acute musculoskeletal problems submitted through the online consultation platform or by phone were triaged and face-to-face assessment would be offered based on clinical needs. This enabled people to be advised on treatment required and to direct them to other services (where appropriate).

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

Staff told us they were valued by practice management and leaders. Leaders had taken steps to recognise and meet the wellbeing needs of staff, which included the necessary resources and facilities for safe working, such as encouraging regular breaks, providing rest areas and an employment programme which promoted staff wellbeing. The service had mental health first aider trained staff (individuals trained to recognise the signs of mental ill-health, provide initial support, and guide others to appropriate professional help, similar to physical first aid).

Staff were supported within their individual roles to ensure their workloads were realistically manageable. All staff members had a regular individual work review meetings with their team lead, which enabled workload and wellbeing to be monitored. This facilitated early recognition and addressing of any issues.

The service had held three closed practice learning events (PLE) per year. We were told these had brought all the staff together for both learning and team building. Attendance levels for these events were high, and the staff had provided positive feedback from the events over the past year.

Beacon Medical Group (the provider of all 6 services) had reviewed staff feedback from staff surveys and had good overall results. The results evidenced that staff felt the practice was a nurturing and supportive environment to work in, providing care, encouragement and wellbeing for all employees.