Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust

On this page

• Overview
• Learning culture
• Safe systems, pathways and transitions
• Safeguarding
• Involving people to manage risks
• Safe environments
• Safe and effective staffing
• Infection prevention and control
• Medicines optimisation

We assessed two quality statements from this key question to assess the quality of care. We did not assess enough quality statements to rate this key question. We found staff followed policies and procedures around admission and discharge of patients and that there were enough staff on duty to keep people safe.

This service scored 0 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We did not look at Learning culture during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Safe.

We spoke with 13 patients during the two days of our inspection and none of them expressed any concerns regarding their admission, discharge or transfers between different hospitals. Senior staff told us that they reviewed referrals via the electronic patient record to ensure they could meet the patient’s needs before staff agreed to the admission. Both hospitals had an admissions criteria in place, based on what care and treatment they could provide. Senior staff advised us that they could refuse to admit a patient if they did not fit their admission criteria.

We did not look at Safeguarding during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Safe.

We did not look at Involving people to manage risks during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Safe.

We did not look at Safe environments during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Safe.

Patients told us that the ward staff were caring and provided them with the care and treatment they needed in a professional compassionate manner. Most patients said there were enough staff on duty all the time. A few said sometimes it felt like there were not enough staff. For example, there was not any physiotherapy at the weekend. In general staff came very quickly when patients called. However, one patient felt that sometimes they did not come immediately as they were dealing with other patients and one patient said they sometimes needed to remind staff to give him his call bell. We saw that there were enough staff on duty and that they could respond to patients quickly. There were low staff vacancy rates across the two hospitals. There were no vacancies for registered nurses at Haslemere and less than one whole time equivalent at Milford. There was one health care support worker vacancy across both hospitals. There was a continuous recruitment plan in place. This meant that the services were able to replace staff quickly when they left. This included recruiting staff from overseas.

We did not look at Infection prevention and control during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Safe.

Medicines including controlled drugs (CD) and medical gases were stored securely. Records indicated medicines were stored within their recommended temperature ranges. However, the storage area for gases was designed for a different size cylinder than the ones currently used by the trust. Whilst we saw a target oxygen saturation rate in a patient's record, the prescribing records reviewed indicated that prescriptions for oxygen lacked a target oxygen saturation rate. Therefore, we were not assured that staff administering oxygen could easily identify the patients target saturation rate. Ordering of medicines was easier and quicker following the roll out of the e-prescribing and medicines administration system. During the week, ordered medicines including medicines for discharge were delivered twice a day. Alternative arrangements were available for weekends and bank holidays.