Accreditation will help improve Blackpool hospital wards

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals is to introduce a ward accreditation scheme from next month which it is hoped will help drive up standards.

Doctors and nurses will be assessed including through asking patients about their stay and reviewing patient feedback.

The scheme could be extended in future to include operating theatres and treatment for out-patients.

Dr Jim Gardner, medical director for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, told a meeting of the Trust's board of directors the initiative would enable "a set of standards to be agreed across the Trust and for teams to sign up to them and maintain them."

He added this would be "a recognition that what goes on at ward level, managed by the ward sisters and teams, is fundamental to patient health."

Trust chief executive Kevin McGee told the meeting: "If you look at any of the safest hospitals in the country, they all have some ward accreditation embedded in their processes.

"There will be some wards that will not meet the standards and we have to be ready to put in the support, and that's the responsibility of the board to put the resources in.

"But it will be driven by the nursing leadership team. Certainly to start it will be about nursing standards, then it needs to go into medical standards to expand it."

A report setting out the proposals says : "Wards and departments will be rated and for a ward to achieve accreditation status they must have achieved

the required standard on an agreed number of assessments over a defined period of time."

Wards will have to meet standards to show they are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

The report adds: "Each clinical team will be assessed against the standards through observations of care, asking patients and staff relevant questions, reviewing patient feedback and reviewing relevant key performance indicator data."