Royal Cornwall Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

We reviewed the kindness, compassion and dignity quality statement for the caring key question.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

Patients we met were all highly complementary about their care and compassion of staff. We saw evidence of this in all the interactions we observed between staff and patients. At times when the department was crowded, which were now a regular occurrence, patients were being held and looked after in one of the corridors of the department. We observed these patients being treated with kindness, although they told us, and the staff agreed, it was difficult to be able to maintain privacy in conversations due to this being an open area. There were portable screens which could be used, and staff would take patients to a private area as much as possible for any tests or procedures to maintain their dignity. Friends and family survey results from April 2024 indicated 85.81% had a very good or good experience and 9.08% had a poor or very poor experience. This was out of 606 surveys.

Staff were clear in not wanting to make the holding areas in the corridor more permanent by adding privacy curtains or making them into makeshift bays. They were determined using this area needed to be recognised as temporary and also an inappropriate way to have to care for patients. They told us it was seen as the best of the poor options, which included leaving a patient on an ambulance (which also happened frequently) and no one considered it to be acceptable for the patients.

Members of the NHS ambulance service we met and doctors supporting the department from other specialties spoke highly about the camaraderie and teamwork in the department. The paramedics and ambulance technicians we met said they felt part of the team and were respected by staff in the department.

We observed staff treating patients with kindness and compassion.

We did not look at Treating people as individuals during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Independence, choice and control during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Responding to people’s immediate needs during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Workforce wellbeing and enablement during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.