St Benedict's Hospice

Updated 10 June 2020

St Benedict’s Hospice is situated just outside of Sunderland and provides inpatient and day hospice facilities as well as a specialist palliative care centre. It opened in 1984 and provides care and support to the people of Sunderland and its surrounding districts.

The hospice and centre form part of the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS foundation trust and the hospice is also supported by St Benedict’s hospice charity.

Updated 10 June 2020

We rated it as outstanding because:

We rated responsive and well led as outstanding. We rated safe, effective and caring as good.

See the end of life services summary section below.

Updated 10 June 2020

• There was compassionate, inclusive and effective leadership at all levels. Leaders at all levels demonstrated high levels of experience, capacity and capability needed to deliver excellent and sustainable care. They were visible and approachable in the service for patients and staff. They supported staff to develop their skills. Leaders had a shared purpose and motivated staff to succeed in delivering quality care to patients.
• There was an extremely strong and effective focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the service, including through appropriate use of external accreditation and participation in research.
• The staff team were stable, experienced and committed. The team’s focus on continuous development meant that standards were constantly rising. Topic specific sub groups ensured that any areas in need of improvement remained ‘on the radar’ and progress was regularly checked. Staff were given sufficient time to develop new and innovative ways to improve.
• There was a ‘can-do’ approach to end of life care when it came to people’s individual needs and preferences. The team were proactive in seeking solutions to barriers to fulfilling these and were willing and not afraid to try new things to ensure patients’ care was right for them. People with protected characteristics under the Equality Act (2010) were offered care in a way that was tailored to suit them and empower them to make as many decisions about their care and their death as they wished.
• Services were tailored to meet the needs of individual people and were delivered in a way to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care. Care and treatment were holistically planned in collaboration with patients, making them active partners in their care at all levels.
• We saw evidence of strong, innovative multidisciplinary and multi-organisational working. There was evidence of proactive collaboration and bespoke care planning, which demonstrated how the hospital worked with other organisations to ensure care was planned and delivered to meet the needs of patients in a sustainable, future proof way.
• It was easy for people to give feedback and raise concerns about care received. The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and shared lessons learned with all staff. The service demonstrated where improvements had been made as a result of learning from reviews and that learning was shared with other services. The service included patients in the investigation of their complaint. There had been no formal complaints about the service in the 12 months leading up to the inspection
• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and took account of their individual needs. All feedback we received regarding staff care and treatment was positive. Staff worked in collaboration with families and individuals to deliver holistic and individualised care which fully reflected patient’s wishes.
• The service managed patient safety incidents well. Staff recognised and reported incidents and near misses. Managers investigated incidents and shared lessons learned with the whole team and the wider service.
• The service had enough medical staff with the right qualifications, skills, training and experience to keep patients safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment.