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Our quality and safety standards

We care about the quality and safety of your treatment. It’s one of our highest priorities which is why we follow a stringent set of local and national policies so that you receive the best possible care. 

You can find out more about what you can expect as a patient from the NHS in the NHS constitution. 

How we’re doing at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust 

We outline our performance strategy and plans which our Trust Board measures, along with other agencies, to ensure we meet our performance standards. 

Read our latest our latest quality account  to see how we are doing. 

Quality Care Commission (CQC) report  

CQC is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. It inspects services to make sure they meet certain standards of care, and rates them based on their performance.  

Read our latest CQC report  

Patient feedback 

It’s the most important way of measuring our performance. We listen and take your views and feedback very seriously. It helps us to inform our services and improve our care where necessary.  

Each month, we provide a patient experience report which collates and reviews information gathered from a range of surveys and services.  

Read our latest patient experience report 

Quality and safe care for you 

 

We comply with the Government’s requirement to provide our patients with same-sex accommodation to help safeguard their privacy and dignity. 

We provide our patients with male or female only sleeping areas with easy access to same-sex toilets and bathrooms. You can choose to share accommodation in areas such as paediatrics, cancer care and haematology. 

If you need urgent, highly specialised care, we may need to move you to a mixed sex accommodation ward for a period of time, before moving you to single sex accommodation. 

 

We’re committed to ensuring that everyone is treated with dignity and respect and to challenge and root out discrimination. We want the Trust to be a community where our patients and our staff feel valued, safe and free from discrimination of any kind.

We’re focused on making sure that equality and diversity is a part of everything that we do. To improve access, experience and health outcomes for all our patients, service users, carers and our workforce.

Equality is about:

  • creating a fairer society
  • acting morally, because it’s the right thing to do
  • abiding by current legislation, because it’s what we have to do
  • removing barriers so that no-one is excluded from equal access to our services or employment
  • creating equal life chances for all.

Diversity is about valuing difference and promoting a culture of inclusivity

We’re proud to be a diversity champion, partnering with Stonewall, Europe’s biggest charity supporting, advising and championing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) inclusion.

How we work to achieve this

The Equality Act 2010 legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society. The categories apply to everyone and not just minorities. They are:

  • age
  • disability
  • gender reassignment
  • race
  • religion or belief
  • sex
  • sexual orientation
  • pregnancy and maternity
  • marriage/civil partnership.

We all have a gender, a sexual orientation, a race, a belief (including Atheism or Agnosticism).

Every policy and service at the Trust has an Equality Impact Assessment to highlight if there will be a negative impact for any of these 9 protected characteristics.

The Equality Act also introduced a Public Sector General Equality Duty that requires public sector organisations to positively promote equality. This is measured by the Equality Delivery System (EDS) gradings, which are published annually alongside a set of our annual equality reports.

Read our Public Sector General Equality Duty reports.

Find out more about your rights under the Equality Act.

What should you do if you feel you have been disadvantaged or treated less favourably

If you feel you have been disadvantaged or treated less favourably because of one of these aspects of who you are, you can question the legality of this under the Equality Act.

If you feel that there’s a negative impact for you or someone else, please contact our patient liaison and advice team

 

We see thousands of patients every week across our hospitals. High volumes of people indoors increases the spread and risk of infection which we take very seriously. 

How we help to keep you safe 

We take a planned and unexpected (reactive) approach to keeping you safe.  

Our planned measures include policies and guidelines, staff training, safety audits, infection surveillances and guidance on antibiotic choice to minimise the risk of antibiotic resistance. 

If an expected infection happens, we investigate the incident, advise staff and patients and inform members of the public. 

Zoned areas 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have introduced a simple 3 zone system to indicate potential infection risks. Areas within our facilities are designated ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’ risk. 

 Each zone also has specific entry restrictions to indicate who can enter and what precautions you need to take. 

Red – (REDHIGH infection risk, HIGH entry controls 

  • For patients who have had a positive COVID test 
  • Entry only for those with ward staff permission – you must wear appropriate PPE. 

Amber – (AMBERMEDIUM infection risk – STANDARD entry controls 

  • For patients, visitors and staff who do not have COVID-19 symptoms, but who have not been tested for the virus. 
  • Everyone must wear a face mask, use hand sanitiser and maintain their distance from others. 
  • Amber zones apply to most general wards, A&E and outpatient areas, and most communal areas, for example, corridors and restaurants 

Green – (GREENLOW infection risk – HIGH entry controls 

  • Only for patients who have self-isolated and, in many cases, tested negatively for COVID-19 within the last 72 hours 
  • Everyone must wear a face mask, use hand sanitiser and maintain their distance from others. 
  • Entry only for those with ward staff permission for specific patients. 

How you can help to keep yourself, other patients and our staff safe 

Washing your hands regularly and thoroughly will help reduce the risk of infection. We ask all our patients and visitors to use the hand sanitising gel stations and handwashing stations located across our hospitals. 

 You must wash your hands when you: 

  • enter or leave the building 
  • enter or leave a ward 
  • have used the toilet 
  • have eaten. 

Please don’t visit if you have a cold, flu, vomiting, diarrhoea, a high temperature or aches and pains. You can easily pass infection from these illnesses onto others.

Find out more about how we prevent and control infection across our hospitals

 

To deliver safe and compassionate care we need the right staff in the right place at the right time. 

Our senior nursing team uses monthly safe staffing data to analyse trends, plan future staffing needs and make sure there’s an appropriate blend of staff skills on all our inpatient wards.  

Maintaining safe staffing 

We use a real-time monitoring system which allows the senior nursing team to view what’s happening on our inpatient wards in real-time. They can assess: 

  • how busy a particular ward is 
  • how ill patients on a particular ward may be and if they need a higher level of care, for example one-to one-nursing 
  • unplanned staff absences that need covering 

The senior nursing team uses the information twice a day to report any issues or needs. They can redistribute nurses where needed to maintain safe staffing levels.