Buxton's Fenton Ward maintains gold standards of care

Gold accreditation shows a team is consistently providing a high level of care. It is the highest stamp of quality for services provided at Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust, which includes Cavendish Hospital.

Kate Casey is Fenton Ward’s manager. She said: “The team and I are really pleased to be awarded gold accreditation. It’s been challenging but ensures that we maintain high standards and that our focus is always on patient experience.”

The trust introduced its Quality Always (QA) initiative to encourage continuous progress in clinical care in 2014 and all clinical teams now work towards first achieving and then maintaining their gold status. Fenton Ward provides rehabilitation care, predominantly to older patients, and was successful recently in maintaining its gold status.

A spokesperson for the trust said: “It is a big achievement for a team to reach gold standard and shows how they have excelled in making sure systems are in place so that patients can always expect the very best of care."

Kate said: “To maintain gold we had a Quality Always inspection from the trust’s QA team. This was predominantly completed virtually but required a ward inspection as well so that patients were given the opportunity to give feedback on their experience of the care that they were being given.

“To maintain our accreditation, we had to be able to evidence that we were continuing to look at ways to reflect and improve our practice.”

Fenton Ward is a hospital ward which focuses on rehabilitation for patients.

Kate, who works at the Manchester Road based hospital, said: “With Covid restrictions this has been more challenging as we haven't been able to support patients in ways that we normally would, such as group activities.

“Communicating with family members is vital for many of our patients and we used to rely strongly on relatives visits to communicate. However we have supported families by keeping strong links with them through regular updates, either by phone or via virtual meetings.

“The Fenton ward team is very passionate about our local community, and we are proud to support as much as possible to reduce acute hospital admissions whether that be as an inpatient or a day attender.”

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