What 1357 hospital inpatients think about aspects of their stay in British acute hospitals

Following on a long series of interviews and pilot studies a substantial questionnaire was devised for soliciting the reactions of patients to their stay in hospital. With the cooperation of health authorities it was distributed to ex-patients in seven acute hospitals. A total of 1357 respondents returned a completed questionnaire. In this paper the responses to some 17% of the questions are presented. Most of these particular questions have been selected because they are concerned with nursing issues but a few others are included on account of their relevance. What comes across very clearly from the pattern of responses are the wide disparities between hospitals. Given that the questions were deliberately intended to be very specific a comparison of the results obtained in one institution with the overall averages does enable attention to be focused on areas where improvements are called for. In fact a number of health authorities, recognizing this feature, have since commissioned studies.