Adult inpatient survey 2024

This survey looks at the experiences of people who stayed at least one night in hospital as an inpatient.

People were eligible to take part in the survey if they stayed in hospital for at least one night during November 2024 and were aged 16 years or over at the time of their stay.

What we found

Results from the 2024 survey show some areas of improvement when compared to those from 2023. Of the 36 questions that were also asked in 2023, 17 show statistically significant improvement, 17 remain stable and 2 show statistically significant decline.

Although results are still poor for many of areas of care – and continue to be worse than those reported in 2020 – this year’s survey indicates early signs of improvement in how people experience acute adult inpatient services.

There has been some improvement in areas relating to interactions with hospital staff and patients feeling involved in their own care when compared to the 2023 results. This includes patients feeling they were treated with respect, dignity, kindness and compassion, feeling included in conversations and involved in decisions about their care and treatment, as well as having confidence and trust in the hospital staff treating them.

While a majority of elective patients are generally positive about their experience of how long they had to wait before being admitted to hospital, two in five felt that they had to wait too long, with a similar proportion of elective patients reporting their health worsened while on the waiting list.

This year’s results also found that although 79% of patients had conversations with staff about their health or social care needs after leaving hospital, almost a quarter of respondents (23.1%) did not get enough support from health or social care services to help them recover or manage their condition.

Positive findings

Interactions with hospital staff

• 82.2% of respondents felt they were ‘always’ treated with respect and dignity while in hospital and 79.9% of respondents felt they were 'always' treated with kindness and compassion.
• Most respondents felt they were able to talk to hospital staff about their worries and fears to some extent (60.4% ‘always’ and 30% ‘sometimes’).
• 76.2% of respondents ‘always’ felt included in conversations about their care by both doctors, while 76.8% ‘always’ felt included by nurses.
• A majority of respondents felt staff involved them in decisions about their care and treatment to some extent (43.8% were involved ‘a fair amount, 36.8% ‘a great deal’).
• Confidence and trust in hospital staff remains high, with 80.1% and 78.3% saying they ‘always’ had confidence and trust in doctors and nurses respectively (compared to 80.2% and 77.8% in 2022, respectively).

Staff availability

• 57.9% felt there were ‘always’ enough nurses on duty to care for them, compared to 55.7% in 2023 and having previously fallen to 51.6% in 2022.
• Most respondents felt they were able to get a member of staff to help them when they needed attention to some extent (64.5% ‘always’ and 33.1% ‘sometimes’).

Overall experience

• 52.1% of respondents rated their overall experience of inpatient care as a 9 or 10 (where 10 is a very good experience) compared with 50.8% in 2023. Those who gave scores of 0 or 1, indicating they had a very poor experience, remains low at 3.4%.

Key areas for improvement

Waiting times

• 22.2% of elective patients said they would like to have been admitted ‘a bit sooner’, while 19.9% said ‘a lot sooner’.
• 25.2% of elective patients said their health got ‘a bit worse’ while waiting to be admitted to hospital, while a further 17.7% said it got ‘much worse’.
• 17.8% of respondents felt they waited ‘far too long’ to get a bed after arriving at hospital, unchanged compared to 2023 (17.8%).
• 25.5% of patients who had to wait to be admitted onto a ward did so from between 6 to 12 hours, with a further 17.5% waiting from 12 to 24 hours, and 9.8% waiting more than 24 hours.

Care after leaving hospital

• 19.9% of respondents said that hospital staff did not discuss whether they would need any additional equipment or changes to their home after leaving the hospital but would have liked them to. Analysis also indicates a downward trend in most positive response option for this question since 2020.
• Less than a half (47.5%) of respondents felt they ‘definitely’ got enough support from health or social care services to help them manage their condition after leaving hospital, and 23.1% said they did not receive enough support.

How experience varies for different groups of people

Respondents with a disability or those living with frailty reported poorer experiences of inpatient care for all the questions analysed in the survey.

Similarly, respondents with dementia, Alzheimer’s, a mental health condition, a neurological condition, or a condition which affects their physical mobility reported poorer experiences in most areas.

People who had an emergency admission to hospital also had poorer experiences than those with planned admissions.

In contrast, older people, male respondents, people who were in hospital for an elective admission, and those not considered frail generally reported better experiences across most areas of care.

Results for NHS trusts

A-Z list of inpatient survey results by NHS trust

Each trust has been provided with a benchmark report, which provides: detail of the survey methodology, headline results, the trust score for each evaluative question, banding for how a trust score compares with all other trusts. The reports also provide results at hospital site where data is available.

Reports

Open data

Supporting information

How will results be used?

We will use the results from the survey to build an understanding of the risk and quality of services and those who organise care across an area. Where survey findings provide evidence of a change to the level of risk or quality in a service, provider or system, we use the results alongside other sources of people’s experience data to inform targeted assessment activities.

Other organisations

NHS trusts

Trusts, and those who commission services, use the results to identify and make the changes they need to improve the experience of people who use their services.

NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care

Information collected nationally in a consistent way is essential to support public and Parliamentary accountability. The results are used by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care for performance assessment, improvement and regulatory purposes.