Scottish Government
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Scottish Inpatient Experience Survey 2012

Scotland's Chief Statistician today published national results of the 2012 Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey.

There was a slight improvement in the experiences of patients nationally compared to the previous survey in 2011. Scottish inpatients were again generally positive about their hospital stay.

The area with the most improvement was people’s experiences of the hospital and ward environment. This year slightly more patients indicated that the ward, bathrooms and toilets were clean; they were happy with the food and drink they received; and noise at night was less of a problem.

Despite the improvements elsewhere, the percentage of patients who were confident that they could look after themselves when they left hospital saw a further reduction by one percentage point to 85 per cent; it had dropped by two percentage points in 2011.

This year, questions about care and support services that needed to be arranged before patients could leave hospital were introduced. Of patients that required care or support services, 82 per cent rated that, overall, the services they got after leaving hospital were excellent or good;

Other interesting findings from this report

* Overall, patients were most positive about their experiences of the staff and least positive about the arrangements made for them leaving hospital;

* Overall 85 per cent of patients rated their care and treatment as excellent or good, the same as in 2011;

* The results were similar to those from the latest survey of inpatients in England.

Three NHS Boards (NHS Grampian, NHS Highland and NHS Orkney) showed moderate improvement in the experiences of their patients. NHS Fife was the only board where patients had slightly less positive experiences than the year before. Overall, the experiences of patients in the remaining 11 NHS Boards showed little change compared to the 2011 survey.

Related information

Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey 2012

These results are from the 2012 Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey. The survey was sent to adult inpatients (aged 16 years old or above on discharge) who had an inpatient hospital stay between October 2010 and September 2011.

More information about Better Together, Scotland’s Patient Experience programme

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