Carlisle Central Practice

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

Caring – this means we looked for evidence that the provider involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect. This is the first assessment for this newly registered service. This key question has been rated Good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

This service scored 65 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The provider treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. However, some patients who spoke with us said they felt privacy could be improved in the reception area at Fusehill Medical Centre as it was easy to be overheard while talking to the receptionists. We observed this during our site visit, as the reception area was very quiet, making it easy to hear what was being discussed between patients and staff. We spoke about this with the practice who said, while there was a private room available for patients to request, they would investigate ways to improve confidentiality in general.

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

The provider had processes in place to listen to and understand people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff mostly responded to people’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress. Patient feedback we received as part of the inspection was mixed about the practice’s response to their needs, with 9 of the 26 people who contacted us saying they felt their needs were listened to, but 11 saying they were not. In the National GP Patient Survey, 79% of patients who responded said they felt the healthcare professional they saw or spoke to was good at treating them with care and concern during their last general practice appointment, compared to a national average of 85%. Reviews on the NHS website were more positive, however, with 25 of the 35 reviews mentioning good care.

The provider gave us examples for how they cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff, and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care. We saw staff had been given a range of benefits in an attempt to improve workforce morale, such as having an additional day of annual leave for each year of service up to five years, additional leave on birthdays, and leave for Christmas shopping. While we saw from staff feedback that these were appreciated, staff also told us that they felt support for staff was unequal across the two practice sites and that they felt communication within the practice could be better. A third of staff (7) did not feel supported, and almost half (9) did not feel like their feedback was acted on.