"I could not fault the quality of care at all"

Dear jupiterjy89

Thank you for contacting us with your experience via Care Opinion. I am very pleased to learn your son was well looked after on the Paediatric Assessment Unit (PAU). I hope he is now recovering well.

To help me send your kind words to the correct team, please could you let me know which hospital you attended, this will also help me direct your comment regarding the hospital food and purchased food.

Thank you once again for sharing your story and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Sarah

Dear jupiterjy89

Thank you for this information. I will share your story with the team at Musgrove Park Hospital.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact us, it is invaluable for the Trust to receive feedback.

Kind regards

Sarah

Dear Jupiterjy89

Many thanks for your time in sharing your feedback about your recent visit to PAU with your son.

I am absolutely delighted to hear you and your son received the very best of care from our colleagues throughout your stay with us. I hope your son is now much better from his illness.

I apologise for the delay in responding to your feedback - we are currently exploring your experience and wanted to give you some information on how we plan to improve our catering service in response to your feedback. I am very sorry to hear the food your son was provided was not to the healthy standards expected. We do strive to provide well-balanced and healthy food options for our children and young people and I am very sorry you were not provided with these choices. We are currently actively involved in discussions with our department's dietician, Heidi, who leads on our menu choices, to improve our catering service. Upon initial conversations, steps towards improving our meal choices include moving away from any ready meals, increasing our food options including the flexibility and variety in food choices available, better information sharing on all our food options available, and we will also remind all our staff colleagues we have a variety of food options accessible out of hours and for our PAU patients. We will update you again when we have formalised all the changes planned.

It would be great to hear more about your experience as well to help us improve our service. If you wish to have a conversation with us to help improve our catering service then please contact our Matrons Caroline Jackson or Suzy Mason directly, via Caroline.Jackson@somersetft.nhs.uk and Suzy.Mason@somersetft.nhs.uk.

I will share your wonderful feedback about the care you received in PAU with everyone who looked after your son and I will also share with the whole of the Children’s unit – everyone will be very appreciative of your kind comments.

Kindest regards

Dr Holly

Dear Jupiterjy89

I wanted to send you a message to update you on what we have been working on to improve our meal choices for our children and young people when staying with us.

Again, I am sorry you and your son were not provided with the standard of healthy food expected. In response to your feedback we have begun to update our food menus and increase choice and availability. Heidi, our dietician is kindly leading on these changes to ensure our food options are well balanced healthy meal choices. Changes include, ensuring our wards and importantly the Paediatric Assessment Unit will have a full selection of hot and cold food choices at all hours. Healthy packed lunches (a selection of a sandwich, snack, fruit and vegetable portions and a pudding) and a range of hot meals will be offered including, cottage pie (allergen free), chicken in gravy (allergen free), lasagne, and provencal vegetable bake. These changes will be implemented in the coming months.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to us, your feedback is invaluable to ensure we continue to provide the very best of care and service provision for our children, young people and families.

Kindest Regards

Dr Holly