Do you remember
the brilliant sketch from The Frost Report, with John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett
Today, as part of my work with Voluntary Norfolk, I am working as part of a PLACE team. PLACE stands for Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment
The NHS website says "Good environments matter. Every NHS patient should be cared
for with compassion and dignity in a clean, safe environment. Where standards
fall short, they should be able to draw it to the attention of managers and
hold the service to account. PLACE assessments will provide motivation for
improvement by providing a clear message, directly from patients, about how the
environment or services might be enhanced."
"The assessments involve local people [known as patient
assessors] going into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment
supports the provision of clinical care, assessing such things as privacy and
dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance and, more recently,
the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with
dementia or with a disability…The assessments take place every year, and
results are published to help drive improvements in the care environment. [Note
that PLACE assessments focus exclusively on the environment in which care is
delivered and do not cover clinical care provision]"
A team of us visit a hospital, or part of a hospital, and consider how good the environment is. A few of the team are NHS staff, but some of us are local people [like me] who are deemed to be independent and fair-minded. We ask things like...Is it clean? Are the signs clear? Are meals delivered on time, and presented well? Is the building well maintained? Are the curtains round the bed giving adequate privacy? etc. We do
not look at clinical care, or medical treatments. We ask the question 'If I had to stay here as a patient, or come in as a visitor what things would bother me, or make my time here less comfortable? We work within strict guidelines and have to give a careful report on all the issues. We make lots of positive comments - and we are given the same lunch as the patients will eat on the day of our visit. The food has been extremely good on every one of my assessments.
I've been doing this for three years now. I have learned an awful lot - and I am impressed to go back and see how suggestions have been implemented, and improvements made. NHS staff work incredibly hard, often in difficult conditions, old buildings, with tight budgets. But they are cheerful, and helpful. Patients are usually pleased with the care they are receiving
We are not Ofsted, we are not judging the staff. And we do not walk round with clipboards, ticking things off - we observe carefully and compare notes once back in our private room. Sometimes if we make a suggestion, staff say "Yes we would like to improve that too" - and our recommendation can help inform budgetary decisions.
Obviously it is all confidential - so I cannot tell you where I have been. But it is good to know that there are people regularly monitoring not just the treatments, operations and medicines - but also the state of the bathrooms, the mealtime routines, and the general ambience of the surroundings. If a patient feels comfortable, and is well fed, is close to a decent loo, and can look outside onto well tended gardens...all these things help with the healing process. I know my PLACE!
Despite that, we have had three costumes to help with this week. Rosie is wearing her 2023 Worst Witch Cape as part of a Traitors Outfit. Three years on, that costume continues to prove useful! Bob was prevailed upon to make a Traitors Badge, and he produced an excellent laser cut piece, sprayed gold. I found a spare chain for it. It did not get photographed, but it looks just like this one! Clever Bob 
