St Teresa's Hospice

Updated 17 November 2022

St Teresa’s Hospice is a hospice providing palliative and end of life care to adults with life limiting conditions. The hospice is situated in Darlington. The hospice has 10 inpatient beds, however at the time of the inspection they had 6 inpatient beds open. There were two patients being supported in the inpatient unit at the time of the inspection.

Facilities include an inpatient unit, a community rapid response service, hospice at home service, outpatient services and wellbeing and family support services. The head of workforce development was the registered manager.

The service is registered with the CQC to provide:

Treatment of disease, disorder and injury

Updated 17 November 2022

Our rating of this service stayed the same. We rated it as good because:

• The service had enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to patients, acted on them and kept good care records. They managed medicines well. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them.
• Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the service’s vision and values, and how to apply them in their work. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of patients receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with patients and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

However:

• Venous thromboembolism risk assessments were not routinely carried out.
• Regular checks of syringe driver administration of medicines were not consistently carried out for one patient and there was no risk assessment undertaken relating to this.
• There was no process for checking patient own controlled drugs awaiting destruction.
• There was no clear protocol for when staff scored below 100% on the safety of medicines administration safety checks assessment processes.

Updated 17 November 2022

Our rating of this service stayed the same. We rated it as good. See the summary above for details.