Results from the 2018 Children and Young People’s Patient Experience Survey for Oxford University Hospitals was released last week.
The survey questioned children aged 15 days to 15 years, and their parents about their experiences at Oxford University hospitals.
With a response rate of about 33 per cent, 401 patients from the trust submitted surveys.
For the majority of questions asked, the Oxford Trust performed about the same as other trusts surveyed. On eleven of the 47 questions asked, the Oxford Trust scored in the top twenty percent of trusts surveyed. The trust scored in the bottom twenty percent on four questions.
The Trust scored worse than most other trusts on one question. The question asked the parents of children aged 15 days to 7 years whether members of staff communicated with children in ways in which the child could understand.
Oxford University hospitals scored a 7.1 out of ten on this question – the worst score in England was 6.9 and the highest was 9.6. 32 per cent of responses were from patients aged up to 7 years old and 31 per cent of responses were from patients aged 8 to 11 years.
The age group with the largest response was patients aged 12 to 15, with 149 responses. For all age groups, parents of patients were asked questions about their child’s experiences, and children aged 8 to 15 also submitted their own responses about their experiences with the Trust.
Parents and caretakers rated the care as an average 8.7 out of ten and 96 per cent said the staff were friendly. Sam Foster, Chief Nursing Officer told the Oxford Mail: “We welcome patient feedback and this national survey is a good way of measuring ourselves against other hospitals and our own performance in previous years. We are committed to work together to continue to improve the experience of care for children and young people.
“We work all year round with a young patient group, YiPpEe, which focuses on improving children’s and young people’s experiences in our hospitals.
“We will be taking a report on the results of this survey to our Board and making recommendations about how best to use the useful feedback to improve our services, working with staff and YiPpEe.”
Overall, 86 per cent of parents and caretakers said their overall experience was positive and 94 per cent of children said they were looked after “very or quite well” in the hospital.
Improvements were advised in changing of admission dates, staff communication with children, food served, and noise levels at night. In addition to the survey questions, respondents gave comments about the hospitals.
