Hospital’s treatment of patients with eating disorders criticised by health watchdog
Friday, 21st October 2022 — By Hannah Neary LDRS
Nightingale Hospital in Marylebone. Photo: Dormskirk_CC BY-SA 3.0
A MENTAL health hospital needs to improve after patients with eating disorders were told to eat to make their families happy, a health watchdog has found.
Staff at the Nightingale Hospital in Marylebone did not always treat patients “with compassion and kindness”, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said.
The private hospital specialises in eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, substance misuse, and general psychiatry for adults as in-patients and outpatients. The service relied on temporary staff and some emergency equipment had expired at the hospital, according to a CQC report published on October 10.
The Nightingale’s overall rating is “requires improvement” following inspections made by 13 health experts between June 7 and June 17.
The hospital said it takes the report “very seriously” and will improve its services. Its substance misuse ward was rated “good” by inspectors but acute wards for adults of working age and specialist eating disorder wards were rated “requires improvement”.
Experts found problems on the eating disorder ward, with some staff giving patients “inappropriate” advice and not using a safe chair for feeding by nasogastric tubing.
The report said: “Some agency staff did not have enough understanding of eating disorders and made inappropriate (even if well meaning) comments to them. For example, saying you should eat to make your family happy.”
It added: “The ward was safe, clean, well equipped, well furnished, and well maintained. However, the room used for nasogastric feeding was not fit for purpose, and there was some out of date emergency equipment.”
The CQC said the hospital’s overall vacancy rate for clinical staff was 29 per cent and it used long-term contracts with bank and agency staff to fill the roles. It added: “Staff vacancies had been filled with long-term locum staff. This had the potential to affect continuity of patient care.”
Inspectors found staff didn’t always treat patients kindly or respect their privacy. It said: “Patients in eating disorder ward described some variability in the way different staff treated them, with some staff not understanding their individual needs, and not treating them with compassion and kindness and respecting their privacy and dignity.”
It later added: “Patients gave examples of times when staff had made them feel ashamed in front of other patients, made them feel like children, and when they had ignored patients who were upset and needed support. Patients said they were not always asked whether student nurses could observe their meetings / support which could lead to them feeling like an ‘exhibit’.”
The hospital was praised for its substance misuse services and the inspectors said staff “treated patients with compassion and kindness”.
It was previously rated “good” by the CQC in March 2019 and had made “significant improvement” since January 2018 when the commission said it “requires improvement” overall, the report said.
A hospital spokesperson said: “At the hospital, we pride ourselves on delivering a high standard of quality and treatment. We therefore take the CQC observations and recommendations very seriously.
“Under the senior management team’s leadership, all hospital departments are fully committed to addressing all the report’s recommendations and ensuring that the required improvements become embedded throughout our services.”
