Royal Surrey County Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

We found a service where managers and staff understood the importance of using performance data including local and national audit to monitor and make improvements to the service. When changes to policy and processes were made, these were communicated effectively to ensure staff understanding and implementation. Wait times and outcomes were better than the national average.

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.

We did not look at Assessing needs during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

Parents were positive about the team approach taken by those caring for their child. They also spoke about an awareness of the needs of their individual child and for one parent it had particularly been important there had been multidisciplinary approach, drawing on different people’s expertise and knowledge as their child and multiple needs.

The service worked closely with charities to support children and families, and provide peer support. For example, the team worked with a national charity to provide peer support sessions and days out, for example bowling trips, for children with diabetes. This helped children and their families meet other people with similar health conditions and develop support networks, in a fun, safe environment. In addition, worked with outside agencies to provide emotional and practical support to children and their families, including well-being packages, play provision and therapy including specialist music therapy. Families also had access to services that provided meals for carers, toiletries and essential wellbeing products. Families could also access a neonatal support group that facilitated peer support for families of babies admitted to Special Care Baby Unit – via the hospital’s charity, the service funded the room the families meet in.

Staff knew where to find policies and processes on the services online systems. Managers had systems in place to ensure staff read and understood policies and procedures. When amendments to a policy or pathway was made, these were emailed to staff who had to sign to say they had read and understood the changes.

Managers recently completed a full performance review of the Paediatric Assessment Unit. As a result of this review, managers introduced a twilight shift, increased doctor attendances during handover and recruited an advanced clinical practice nurse to further support the team. The service was in the process of monitoring whether these changes demonstrated an improvement in the service.

The service had a rolling planned timetable for completing numerous national and local audits to ensure compliance and review the performance of the service. The audit allocated time for re-audit, if standards were not met and review was required.

Audit of GP referral times showed the service was developing a secondary pathway to standardise care.

A review of patient comorbidity themes highlighted backache as an area for review as it is uncommon in paediatrics. Following review, all children and young people with backache were referred to the spinal and orthopaedics team. Following analysis of cases, the service found there was an opportunity to improve recognising malignancies, and therefore developed a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to support this. Since the introduction, referral times had improved.

Staff participated in research trials to support the development of clinical practice, including, Mental Health Intervention for Children with Epilepsy and Psychology Adding Value - Epilepsy Screening studies. The team have also participated in a study to understand factors affecting medication compliance in adolescents with epilepsy and the Developmental Outcomes of Long-Term Feed Supplementation in Neonates to explore the effectives of probiotics for the neonatal population.

Wait times in the Paediatric Assessment Unit for both planned and unplanned attendances, was better than the national average.

The Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) received the trusts internal Gold Certificate in 2024 for recognition of excellence. The unit is also accredited with the Baby Friendly Institute (BFI). This is a global programme through which we demonstrate that we promote breastfeeding, reduce infant mortality and promote close and loving relationships between mother and baby. The SCBU had a Gold BLISS Award. This meant that parents and staff were partners in a baby’s care – through this accreditation process the service undertook parent led ward rounds, promoted family centred care and developmental care and supported parents to sleep next to their babies.

The most recent ‘Royal College of Physicians National Children and Young People Asthma Audit’ showed the service performed better than the national average for all 5 key questions.

The service performed better than or in line with national standards in the most recent national ‘Epilepsy 12 Audit’ from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. As a part of the Epilepsy 12 audit, the Epilepsy Nurse Specialist and paediatric epilepsy service were awarded Gold Outlier recognition for performing consistently well against national benchmarks.

We did not look at How staff, teams and services work together during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Supporting people to live healthier lives during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Monitoring and improving outcomes during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Consent to care and treatment during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.