East and North Hertfordshire Teaching NHS Trust are asking for support for patient representatives to take part in the annual Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment (PLACE).
PLACE assessments support improvements by providing a clear message, directly from patients, about how the environment or services might be enhanced.
The assessments involve local people (known as patient assessors) going into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment supports the provision of clinical care, assessing such things as privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance and, more recently, the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with dementia or with a disability.
Some recent personal experience of in-patient care is useful, although it is not essential. This could be as a patient, relative, carer, friend, patient advocate, volunteer or trust/organisation membership and trust/organisation governor. You will be called a patient assessor even if you are not a patient yourself.
Age is no barrier to being a patient assessor. It can be particularly helpful to have input from children and young people for paediatric areas. Older people make up the majority of the adult in-patient population, so should ideally be well-represented in the PLACE team.
If you are interested and can take part on any of the following dates, please get in touch with the PLACE team via [email protected] stating which assessment you would like to be part of.
In addition, training sessions via Microsoft Teams will be available for those who require refresher training and for those who have not taken part previously.
Full PLACE inspections are to be held during November, with specific dates revealed once you have contacted the PLACE team using the information above.
Further information, including FAQs, can be found on the PLACE webpage.
