Parents have given their seal of approval to the children’s Emergency Department at Salford Royal Hospital, saying their child was treated with dignity and respect and was listened to.
Salford Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) conducted a survey at the end of last year to better understand the children’s Emergency Department at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, known as the PANDA unit.
The main purpose of the survey was to gain insight into what parents and carers thought about their visit and their experience at the PANDA unit, and what can be done to further improve their time spent there.
There were two types of survey, an online and a group survey. The online survey had 76 responses and among them 72% of the respondents felt that what was going to happen was explained to their child. More than half of the parents’ and carers’ children who visited the PANDA unit were under four years old.
The majority of people (97%) understood the nurse or doctor and also felt their child, if old enough to understand, was fully listened to. 95% of the parents and carers felt their child was treated with dignity and respect, plus 89% of people were satisfied with the overall care received at the unit.
One of the parents commented: “I was really happy with the care we received. The doctors and nurses were great with my little boy and looked after me too.”
Another respondent said: ‘’Staff have always been very polite and spoken to me with respect. They give advice clearly and summarise the outcomes.’’
The group survey had 25 responses from Salford groups such as Salford parent carers forum Facebook page, Warm Hut UK, Salford Information Advice and Support Services (SIASS), Salford Autism Facebook page and Hong Kongers CIC group, as well as additional individual ad-hoc feedback. 88% said they visit the PANDA unit when they need urgent medical attention for their children. A few of the things highlighted were that they were well looked after, triaged quickly, listened to, welcomed, treated kindly and attentively, the environment was clean, received empathy, and received good advice and care.
As a result of this survey, a few changes were made to make the patients, parents’ and carers’ experience at this unit even better, such as:
- Mandatory training in understanding additional learning needs and autism was introduced in March 2023. 94% of the staff have already undertaken this training and this is expected to reach 100% by the end of June 2023
- Using leaflets and posters to explain the different clinical areas within the emergency department for children.
Nathan Griffiths, Clinical Lead at PANDA Unit said, “Needing to bring your child to the Emergency Department is always going to be a worrying and stressful time. So, listening to what parents and carers think and, even more importantly the children themselves where possible, is really important to making sure they get the best possible experience when they visit, and we learn from what we’re doing well and where we can make things better.”
Please click here to see the Salford PANDA Unit Service Review
