Patients give their verdict on services at Guy's and St Thomas'

The quality of care provided by staff at Guy’s and St Thomas’ has significantly improved over the last 12 months, according to the results of the national NHS inpatient survey published by the Care Quality Commission on Tuesday 16 April.

The survey of patients treated in July 2012 includes 60 indicators – we improved on 38 indicators when compared to the previous survey in 2011 with only 7 indicators showing a worse score.

Our performance compares well with other major hospitals in London and other major teaching hospitals in England.

Areas in which our performance has improved significantly since the 2011 survey include:

• Communication with patients when they are admitted to hospital and during their hospital stay
• Information provided to patients about the possible side effects of medication they are taking
• Quality of hospital food
• Aspects of patients’ care when they are discharged from hospital

There are also a number of areas for improvement including involving patients in decisions about their care and discharging patients from hospital but improvement has been made in these areas.

Eileen Sills, Chief Nurse, says: “I would like to thank all staff for their hard work which has led to a significant improvement in our national inpatient survey results.

“It is particularly encouraging that our performance has improved in many areas that we focused on following feedback from patients in last year’s survey.

“For example, we have introduced more regular ward rounds, a new ward pack to provide better information for inpatients, and put a lot of effort into improving the quality of hospital food.

“We are not complacent and there is clearly still room for improvement in a number of areas which we are already taking action to address.”

The full results of the survey are available on the Care Quality Commission website www.cqc.org.uk