Enhancing the Healing Environment: Evaluation of The Oak Room Project

Project Lead: Wendy Ferguson

Other Key Staff: Richard Baker, Paul Sinfield, Lorraine Pollard, Mei Tang, Shona Agarwal, Claire Kozlowski, Wendy Ferguson , Claire Sheehan, Tammy Holmes

Partner Involved: Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust

Summary:
The focus of EHE is to enable nurse led teams to make significant improvements to existing health care environments, to promote well being and to encourage and enable full service user involvement. The emphasis is to promote high quality, value for money schemes which will have maximum impact with the resources available incorporating good design principles. 

EHE enables clinical staff to review the impact of the environment on care delivery in partnership with service users and has demonstrated the capacity of frontline staff to be extremely creative in bringing about improvements to the environment in which they deliver care. 

The Oak Room is a purpose built, series of rooms that have been designed to create a homely and calming environment.  They are specifically designed for patients and the relatives of those who are approaching end of life and require a high degree of nursing care.  The Oak Room consists of one single bedroom, an en suite bathroom and a relative’s sitting room all interlinked and equipped to a high standard.  Double doors from the bedroom give access to a private garden.  The Oak Room is a distinct area within the ward.

The purpose of The Oak Room is to provide good quality, skilled care for patients with dementia who have high physical needs or are approaching the end of life.  The facility encompasses a relatives’ room to address the needs of relatives’ and carers.

Aims:

• Develop capacity within LPT to conduct evaluations utilizing research methodologies.
• Establish and maintain working relationships between academic health researchers and the NHS community to share knowledge and increase understanding.
• To provide evidence to support the use of EHE techniques across Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust.
• Provide information on patient, carer and staff experiences and perceptions of the Oak Room project.

Further Information:
We have ensured that we have service user representation on our steering group to enable them to be involved in the entire process of developing any materials to be used to gather information. For further information about this project please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , CLAHRC Co-ordinator LPT.

Start Date: 05/2010                                                                             Expected End Date: 12/2011

Project Outcomes:
This project will provide evidence on patient, carer and staff experience of the Oak Room.  We aim to improve the end of life care for patients with Dementia and provide evidence for purpose built palliative care suites for patients with dementia.  It will also provide evidence for the use of EHE techniques within LPT and the inclusion of the principles in future estates projects.