26 May 2022
Hundreds of patients who have visited the new Heatherwood building have been extremely positive about their experience – praising staff, volunteers and the environment.
In a Trust survey of more than 550 patients during the first two weeks of opening, the overall satisfaction rate was an impressive 94.9% with many citing the “wonderful” and “compassionate staff” and the “lovely building” as the reasons.
The patient survey focused on six key questions around wayfinding, seeking help on site and their overall experience.
Patients were chosen randomly across different departments to gauge a wide cross section of opinion and asked whether it was easy to get to their appointment, whether they needed help, the ease of finding help and how satisfied they were with the help received.
Heatherwood scored highly across the board - 91% of patients said they found it extremely easy or somewhat easy find help and exactly the same number (91%) said they were very satisfied with the help received. Regarding the ease of finding the hospital, some patients did give constructive feedback regarding signage and wayfinding. This has been reviewed by the Heatherwood clinical and operational teams who are making changes to the internal and external signage and are also working with the local highways department to amend the signage on the main roads
At the end of the survey, patients left comments relating to their overall experience and there was much praise for the Heatherwood staff and volunteers.
Katharine Horsfall, Associate Director, Heatherwood Hospital, said: “These types of patient surveys are an important tool in the early days of opening to sort out any teething problems, see which elements we have got right and whether we need to make any changes or improvements.
“I’m really proud that the professionalism of our staff and volunteers has been praised so highly by patients. It’s brilliant that their care and compassion has made such a strong impression and added to patients’ overall positive experience at the hospital.”