"Not happy with food on A11"

Thank you very much for taking the time to feed back to us around your experience in the ward.

Food

I'm really sorry that it seems you were not impressed with the food available - it's not feedback we get very often however it helps us that you have shared it. We try to work hard to ensure that our patients get a bit of a help to chose their meals from the menu, and have a good system in place for making sure people get what they ordered. There is mostly quite a wide range of choices on the menu and our staff work hard to make sure that the meals get from the kitchen to your table in as little time as possible so that they are still hot.

It seems that something has gone wrong in this process in your experience with us and I have arranged for our ward dietician to come and give short talks to the staff around helping people to get the most out of their meals.

Meal times are a priority for us in ward A11 and it is always useful to get feedback around the things that we really care about.

Nurses

Care staff

I'm glad you were happy with the nursing and care staff - we find it really rewarding when we get feedback like this.

Things to do

I recognise that getting bored and fed up is a recurring theme within the ward for our patients, particularly when you start to feel a bit better. There are a few things ongoing with regards to this, including investing in our activities box, buying some books, and making both our window space and our quiet room more usable and beneficial for patients and visitors.

We are also in the very early stages of developing a project involving the carers centre which should both provide you with some stimulation, and you and your family with some helpful advice and support for discharge.

It's a work in progress, and hopefully you wont have to come back in to hospital to see it, but your feedback will help improve the experiences of our future patients, and we are grateful for that.

Just an update on our planned change regarding a lack of things to do on the ward -

Things to do

We had our initial trial run of our new project last week, whereby we have been assisting patients and their carers to leave the ward environment for a short time and get, at best, outside for some fresh air and a tea or coffee, but at least down to the WRVS café. We have been working on this project for some time with the help of the Falkirk Carer's Centre and the Forestry Commission (for the good weather days), and aim to continue to support this once a week.

We would hope that our patients who make use of this project will benefit both from a change in scenery, and from the wealth of information and support that our colleague in the Carer's Centre has to offer.

We have updated our activities box with brand new books and photographs, and have invested in some activities tailored specifically towards people with dementia.

We have spent some time and energy in making our relative's room seem less clinical and it is now some way towards being a comfortable area which can be used by both patients and relatives, with new couches and facilities for tea and coffee.

I would like to thank you again for taking the time to give us feedback as it is already contributing towards changes on the ward for the next patients coming through.