Dorset County Hospital

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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 people were always treated with kindness, empathy and compassion. We checked that people’s privacy and dignity was respected, that they understood that they and their experience of how they were treated and supported mattered. We also looked for evidence that every effort was made to take people’s wishes into account and respect their choices, to achieve the best possible outcomes for them.

At our last assessment we rated this key question good. At this assessment the rating has remained good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

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.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. 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. However, although improvements had been made to the corridor care environment, there remained risks to the privacy of the people who used it.

Staff attitudes and behaviours when interacting with patients were discreet, respectful and responsive. Patients said staff treated them well and behaved appropriately towards them. Patients said staff explained why they were being cared for in escalation spaces and felt they had been treated with respect and kindness during these conversations. When patients had longer waits, usually due to flow issues, they were updated about next steps and were made aware of delays. Patients said staff had checked on them and offered food and drink. We observed staff speaking using patients’ preferred names when speaking with them.

Records showed an incident where a patient experiencing significant pain, had a urinary catheter placed while being cared for in the corridor. Staff and leaders mitigated the risk to patient dignity by ensuring there was no access to the ‘queue out’ corridor during the procedure. Following this incident, staff raised concerns with the Freedom to Speak Up Guardian. ED leaders were assured the service was working well to mitigate risks associated with corridor care.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences.

ED staff had access to an onsite chaplaincy team on weekdays, with an out of hours on call service at other times. Patients were supported to access spiritual, pastoral and religious care if they wanted this. Records showed ED staff gained consent from patients before submitting a referral to the chaplaincy team. This service was often accessed by patients who received bad news or were on end-of-life care. The chaplaincy service provided support for people of all faiths.

The trust was an accredited Veteran Aware trust and were committed to supporting the armed forces community. When patients who had been identified as part of the veterans and armed forces community arrived in ED, digital records flags alerted volunteers from Defence Welfare Services. This enabled earlier enhanced support services such as financial aid or mental health.

Staff used specialised tools such as hospital communication books and ‘this is me’ documents to help patients understand and communicate information about their health, care and needs.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Patients said they were able to ask questions about their care and treatment and staff explained things well. Most patients said that staff kept them up to date about waiting times and next steps. One patient said they had attended the walk in ED late at night, on advice from the 111 service. Following walk in triage, staff asked the patient if they were able to wait overnight for further investigations. The patient chose to go home and was supported to return on the following day to continue their care and treatment.

Staff advocated for patients to have choice and control over their care and treatment decisions. Staff shared an example where an end of life care patient presented at the ED and received care and treatment in line with their wishes and preferences despite hospital wide patient flow challenges. Staff considered the patient and family’s preferences, arranging to use the ED quiet room to provide privacy for the relatives to spend time with the patient. Although an inpatient bed became available, the patient and their family chose to remain in the ED quiet room to spend their last moments peacefully.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. 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 alert to people’s needs and proactively took the time to observe, communicate and engage with patients to address this. Patients said they felt staff were responsive to their needs and received pain relief when they needed it. One patient described how staff had responded immediately to calls for help when a nearby patient had become more unwell.

There were well equipped spaces for patients and their carers or families. For patients who experienced miscarriage, ED staff prioritised an identified space in high care which promoted maximum privacy and dignity. There were resources such as baby loss support and keepsake boxes.

Staff were able to access a range of comfort, distraction and de-escalation resources within the ED. This included soft toys and play equipment, fidget spinners and rockers.

The trusts’ aged call bell system was undergoing a replacement programme. The new digital system supported staff to monitor responsiveness of call bells. However, the additional auditing and reporting functionality was not available until the replacement programme was completed across the hospital. ED leaders were assured that staff responded to call bells quickly as there had been no concerns raised from patients or relatives about call bell response times. Once the replacement programme was completed, senior leaders planned to procure additional software to enable central auditing.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care. However, most medical staff reported they had experienced work related burnout and stress.

The 2024 NHS staff survey showed the trust was performing well to improve the experience of staff working at this hospital despite some staff indicators decreasing since the previous year. In ED, nursing staff were more likely to answer positively to the survey than their medical colleagues. For example, most nursing staff said they looked forward to going to work, but less than half of medical staff felt this way. Also, more than half of the ED medical staff felt there were not enough staff at the organisation for them to do their job properly. Both nursing and medical staff said they did not always have time or available staff to take breaks but did not complain about it.

Staff were highly motivated and felt valued by their colleagues, their manager and the trust. Most medical and nursing staff felt their role made a difference to patients and service users and they achieved this with effective team working and management. However, over half of medical staff reported they had felt unwell due to work related stress, often felt work was emotionally exhausting and frequently experienced burn out because of work. RCEM reports on emergency medicine workforce insights showed this was a national problem, with ED consultants typically seeing almost double the number of annual attendances than is considered safe. Despite this, consultant staff sickness rate was 1.49% which was below average compared to the rest of the hospital and national NHS England statistics. Between January to December 2025, there were 89 incidents of violence in the ED. This included 27 reports of patient on staff violence including verbal and actual or attempted physical assault. Leaders recognised the increased reports of violence, which was most noticeable in October 2025. In response to this, the ED established a Prevention management violence and aggression group (PMVA) in December 2025. Leaders planned to use this time to discuss incidents, liaise with police and ensure staff had the appropriate training. Additionally, although body worn cameras were already used by security staff, a pilot was being developed to extend this to clinical staff in ED.

There were support services available to staff such as Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) and professional nurse advocates (PNA). PNAs are registered nurses who are trained to provide safe and confidential spaces for staff to discuss emotional aspects of work, reduce burnout and improve wellbeing. Similarly, TRiM was available through self or manager referral to provide support for staff when workplace trauma occurred.