"Activities to pass the time"

Thank you for taking the time to give us this feedback, it's really important to us to be able to provide a good experience for our patients and your feedback is crucial in this.

I'm delighted that you found our staff to be caring and have enjoyed the food - our colleagues in the kitchen will be encouraged by this I imagine. We all appreciate how important it is that everyone is eating and drinking well so are always looking for ways to improve this.

Your feedback regarding a lack of activities is actually something that has been raised quite recently by another patient - I feel that we can be guilty, sometimes, of focussing too much on medical problems and trying to make you feel better and we can forget that a game of dominoes or a chat over a cup of tea can be equally as therapeutic.

We are, therefore, planning on adding to our existing activities box and working on gathering opinions on this via a suggestion box for patients and visitors. This is clearly important to our patients so we're going to work hard to get it right.

Just an update on our planned change regarding a lack of things to do on the ward -

Things to do

We had our initial trial run of our new project last week, whereby we have been assisting patients and their carers to leave the ward environment for a short time and get, at best, outside for some fresh air and a tea or coffee, but at least down to the WRVS café. We have been working on this project for some time with the help of the Dementia Nurse Consultant, Forth Valley's National Dementia Champion, Falkirk Carer's Centre and the Forestry Commission (for the good weather days), and aim to continue to support this once a week.

We would hope that our patients who make use of this project will benefit both from a change in scenery, and from the wealth of information and support that our colleague in the Carer's Centre has to offer.

We have updated our activities box with brand new books and photographs, and have invested in some activities tailored specifically towards people with dementia.

We have spent some time and energy in making our relative's room seem less clinical and it is now some way towards being a comfortable area which can be used by both patients and relatives, with new couches and facilities for tea and coffee.

I would like to thank you again for taking the time to give us feedback as it is already contributing towards changes on the ward for the next patients coming through