Gloucestershire 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

We looked for evidence that people were treated with kindness, empathy and compassion. We assessed the levels of service users privacy and dignity afforded to service users. We asked people to tell us about their experiences, if they were respected, 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 as 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 with kindness and respect.

People said staff treated them well and behaved appropriately towards them. We observed all staff interacted with service users with kindness and compassion. Curtains were used to respect privacy and dignity. National patient survey data reflected most people felt listened to and were treated with kindness. The hospital was in line with the national average in these categories.

Staff supported people to understand and manage their care, treatment or condition. We saw staff asked about the service users emotional wellbeing and addressed any concerns.

We did not look at Treating people as individuals during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Independence, choice and control during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service mostly made sure people’s care and treatment was effective by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing and communication needs with them.

We received mixed feedback from people on the medical wards on whether staff were able to respond quickly to their needs. People on some wards told us call bells were usually answered quickly by staff however feedback from service users on elderly care wards stated staff were often too busy to respond to their needs for help and toileting. This was not helped by the lack of toilet facilities available to patients on the elderly care ward. The service was aware of the negative communication on the care of the elderly wards regarding a lack of nursing contact and there were established work streams looking at opportunities for improvement.

There was mixed feedback about whether people’s communication needs were being met. Overall, the national inpatient survey showed the service performed well in meeting individuals’ communication requirements, scoring 9.3/10 for language needs. This reflected that staff generally took people’s specific communication needs into account, for example, by arranging interpreters, providing translated materials or offering information in accessible formats such as braille. A family member of a neurodivergent patient told us they had been “kept involved in discussions and decision‑making throughout,” describing communication as clear and consistent. However, we also heard contrasting feedback from a patient with a hearing impairment, who said they did not always understand how they were being treated or what was happening in their care journey.

People told us they were consistently provided food and drink. We saw people being helped with food if they were unable to feed themselves.

Service users and their families could give feedback on the service and their treatment, and staff supported them to do this.

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 deliver person-centred care.

Staff told us they felt positive and proud to work for the provider and within their teams. They described feeling well supported and able to raise issues or share ideas for improvement. We saw ‘You said, we did’ boards displayed in staff areas, which had been introduced to promote staff wellbeing by ensuring their views were heard and that feedback was visibly acted upon.

Leaders had taken steps to recognise and meet the wellbeing needs of staff. There were designated ‘well-being’ champions across the division as well as access to an occupational health service, which included counselling, to support staff’s physical and emotional health needs. Staff had access to an advice and support hub.

The service supported staff safety and encouraged staff to speak up about any physical or emotional abuse episodes from service users or other staff members. There was a freedom to speak up network across the trust. Staff were aware of this provision.

Staff appraisals included conversations about career development and how it could be supported. There were also Professional Nurse Advocates that could offer training and coaching for competency training.