"Family members admission"

Dear Frustrated Family Member

I am extremely sorry to hear of your family member's experience during their 7 week admission to Borders General Hospital. NHS Borders strive to ensure all of our patients receive excellent care throughout their stay and I apologise that this was not your family's experience and for the distress and frustration you have all been caused as a result.

It is important that we learn from this feedback and I would appreciate getting the chance to speak with you, if you are willing to do so, in order for me to find out more details about your family's experience. I will then be able to share the details directly with the wards/services involved in your famly member's care to establish what changes we can make so other patients do not have a similar experience. My contact details are as follows:

01896 825596

karen.maitland@borders.scot.nhs.uk

Meantime, I will share your story with senior members of staff within NHS Borders so that they are aware of your family member's experience.

I am pleased to hear that your family member has now came on leaps and bounds since their discharge and ask that you please pass on my best wishes to them.

Best wishes,

Karen

Dear Frustrated family member,

Please forgive me for the delay in responding to your story. I have been thinking long and hard about how to respond to what I found to be an incredibly sad story.

Firstly, your impression that the clinical staff were unhappy about the number of moves that your family member underwent would be absolutely correct. When delivering medical care, I try to imagine how I would want my family member treated and frankly I would be furious if this were a member of my family. There is no excuse for this many moves but I will attempt to explain why this may have happened. Often when patients come into hospital, their destination is determined by their medical needs (for example a move to a high dependency area). They may then be stepped down from an area like this for the remainder of their acute medical care. Once over their acute illness, they may be moved to a rehabilitation environment where there is more focus on reinablement and physical ability. Finally, if there is a delay in social care, they may be moved again whilst waiting for this. Alternatively, they may be moved to a different place in the hospital that is not a bed consistent with their medical problem (for example a medical patient with pneumonia being looked after on a surgical ward) due to major pressures on beds. All staff dislike this practice but recognise that in times of extreme pressure, it has to take place. We are currently working hard as an organisation to reduce the numbers of patients experiencing this process and have had some success in the last year in achieving this.

In relation to your relative's access to Allied Professionals, I am sorry that you found this wanting. I'm also sorry that you felt there was poor communication between teams. We have recently tried to address this on each ward by introducing daily multi-disciplinary meetings with a view to improving this process. We recogise that a team that communicates well provides the best quality of care and if we can get a bit more detail around your relative's experience, then we can feed this back directly to the teams involved.

Finally, like you have identified, we also feel that an activities coordinator would be beneficial, particularly for our frailer population who lose muscle power on a daily basis whilst lying in bed in hospital. As such, we are engaging in the #endPJparalysis campaign and are looking to get patients up, dressed and moving where ever possible. More physical activity and even getting out of bed, will result in less likelihood of pressure ulceration. As part of this process, activity coordinators have been employed and we are looking to reintroduce tables to the clinical areas where patients can eat together and carry out various activities. We have also engaged our local communities with this and have had several choirs and other groups visit to provide entertainment.

Ultimately, I can only say that I am sorry that your relative had a poor experience during their stay in the BGH. I can assure you that there is a great deal of thought being given to many aspects that you have raised but it would be very helpful to hear more detail around your individual experience as we are very keen that the patient experience helps to drive change and shape future services.

I am so glad to hear that they are now recovering well at home and would ask you to hand on our best wishes to them.

Please feel free to contact Karen above who can provide my email address and contact details. I would be very happy to meet and discuss this further if you felt this would be helpful and indeed it may provide some learning for us to shape our future services.

Thank you very much for taking the time to tell us of your relative's experience.

Best wishes,

Lynn