Enter & View – Princess Royal Hospital - January 2017

Healthwatch has a legal power to visit health and social care services and see them in action. This power to Enter and View services offers a way for Healthwatch to meet some of its statutory functions and allows us to identify what is working well with services and where they could be improved.

The purpose of an Enter and View visit is to collect evidence of what works well and what could be improved to make people’s experiences better. We use this evidence to make recommendations and inform changes both for individual services as well as health and social care system-wide.

Summary of findings

• Patients were very positive about their experiences at the hospital and we observed staff being involved and giving time to patients.
• Long waits in the Clinical Decisions Unit and for some a lack of involvement in decisions
• Parking is an issue for many people, both in getting a space and the cost of parking
• Examples of poor administrative processes
• Cleanliness of the toilets
• Mixed experiences of patients who received care at Royal Sussex Hospital, as well as this hospital