Why an exceptional customer experience matters
Fundamentally, delivering on time, in budget and ensuring the patient experience remains unaffected, are three of the key deliverables within an acute care environment. You can add quality and safety to that mix as well! It's delivering on these that builds the trust for the next project.
Having a contractor on site undertaking other capital projects has proved to be a big enabler in the success so far – it means the contractor can be far more flexible in how they deploy their workforce around the hospital. If we didn’t have such a collaborative relationship it simply wouldn’t work for either party, so that trust and partnership has been critical.
This has included bringing magicians onto the children's ward at Christmas and Easter to help put a smile on their faces.
During the Day Case Theatres project, we worked with the children's ward to completely redesign the hoardings which faced the ward.
They helped us create and paint colourful animals so that instead of wooden hoarding, they were faced with a zoo!
We’ve got a children’s ward overlooking the construction site. Morgan Sindall suggested brightening up the area and together, we came up with the idea of MDF shaped animals that were cut on site, and then painted by the children in the ward – these were then attached to the hoarding around the site perimeter. Additional to that there were several visits to the ward by Morgan Sindall staff – we had a visit at Easter where Easter eggs were given out and these were nice gestures.
595 volunteer hours and £7800 in material donations enabled the team to create a new patient rehabilitation zone that was connected to the transition ward at the hospital.
Once all the overgrown planting and clutter had been demolished and stripped out, the team got to work resurfacing the courtyard, installing decking and wheelchair access, creating new raised planters filled with flowers and plants, building wooden steps and vehicles so that patients could practice relevant rehab tasks outside and giving the facades a facelift with some bright summer colours.
We are so grateful to Morgan Sindall for their time and generosity in completing the Honeybee Garden this week. Their donation will make such a difference to patients. The garden will enhance patient rehabilitation and improve the quality of stay for them and their families.
We are fortunate to have courtyard areas in the hospital but it’s difficult for some with mobility issues though to access these areas. Morgan Sindall agreed to refurbish one as part of a volunteer week. This meant the patients could get out for fresh air, and more importantly get some practical mobility skills moving again. What was absolutely amazing for me though, is one of the patients came up to me shortly after it opened - she had been in hospital after having Brain Tumour removed. She said had been looking out of the window and could see what was happening, and thinking that when she recovered, she would be able get out there and pot some plants. And there she was, when the work completed, out in the garden and getting involved – and that was probably one of the most emotional things I’d had throughout the whole project, where you really felt like we made a difference.
