Salford Royal 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

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

Our rating of caring changed from requires improvement to good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity and took account of their individual needs and choices. They treated patients as individuals and supported their independence and choices.

However, some staff gave negative feedback about the support they received from managers.

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

The staff we spoke with were caring and compassionate. They told us they treated people with respect. Most of the patients and relatives we spoke with told us staff were kind and treated them with kindness. They told us they thought staff were friendly and caring and gave us positive feedback about ways in which staff showed them respect and ensured that their dignity was maintained.

We observed staff speaking with people discreetly to maintain confidentiality. Privacy curtains were available, and patients could be placed in side rooms to provide privacy and to respect their dignity. Patients transferred between the ward and theatre areas were given dressing gowns to maintain their dignity. The surgical wards had protected mealtimes in place.

Stakeholders and partners told us they felt the staff they interacted with were caring and treated individuals with respect.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service treated people as individuals and took into account people’s needs and preferences.

Staff told us people’s needs and preferences were assessed on admission to the surgical wards and before surgery and they respected people’s wishes where possible.

Most patients and relatives we spoke with were positive about the way staff treated them. They told us staff treated them as individuals and took their needs and preferences into account when providing care and treatment. They told us staff respected their cultural needs.

We observed staff providing care and treatment in a respectful and supportive manner. We saw staff undertook a person-centred approach and understood individual’s clinical, personal and needs and preferences.

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.

Staff told us they listened to patients and promoted independence as much as possible. They respected patient’s rights to make choices about their care.

Patients told us the nursing and medical staff explained the care and treatment options to them and allowed them to make informed decisions. We observed staff speaking with patients clearly in a way they could understand.

We saw patients were encouraged to make decisions about their care and carry out independent tasks such as moving around, showering, making their own snacks and using laundry services where it was safe and appropriate to do so.

Patients were given menu choices during mealtimes, with options available for people with specific requirements, such as vegetarian, halal and kosher meals. We saw that refreshment trollies with hot and cold beverages were available in some surgical wards and patients and their relatives could access these when needed.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. Staff listened to people and responded promptly when they needed help, reassurance or emotional support.

Staff told us they routinely assessed and monitored patients in order to provide them with support when they needed it.

Most patients told us they felt comfortable asking for help when they needed it. They told us staff supported their emotional needs and they were able to voice any concerns or anxieties relating to their care and treatment. Patients spoke positively about the way staff provided them with support and reassurance when they felt nervous or anxious about their surgical procedure.

We observed positive interactions between staff and patients and saw staff attended to patients in a timely manner when called. Most patients told us staff responded promptly when called, including during the night.

We scored the service as 2. The evidence showed some shortfalls. The service did not always care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

Ward staff told us their line managers were supportive and morale had improved since our previous inspection in September 2025. However, we also received negative feedback from some medical staff groups and theatre staff about the level of support they received from their line managers. Some staff reported issues around bullying and harassment.

Staff could access employee support programmes for organisational development, counselling, health and wellbeing. Staff could access the SCARF (support, care, assist, recognise and family) programme for support. Staff participated in supervision and debriefs to support their emotional well-being. They could access occupational health and psychologist support, and a number of mental health first aiders were in place to provide support and advice for staff. Staff with prolonged sickness absence were supported through meetings with their line managers and human resources (HR) teams. The service had initiatives to support flexible shift adjustments.

Most of the medical, nursing and support staff we spoke with in the ward and theatre areas and in focus groups told us the HR services and employee support programmes were accessible and beneficial. They understood how to access support services and spoke positively about the SCARF programme.

Wards T4 and T5 (major trauma wards) undertook an improvement project as part of the trust’s violence and aggression reduction collaborative. This aimed to reduce violence and aggression against staff by taking a structured MDT approach for patients exhibiting violent behaviour and implementing a patient activity trolley, distraction techniques and focussing on communication and de-escalation training for staff. The collaborative had reduced violence and aggression incidents to 35 incidents during 2025 compared with 65 incidents reported during 2024. The services had planned to roll out the improvement initiatives across other surgical wards.