The Sam Davies Ward at Barry Hospital is a calm, welcoming and peaceful space. The ward offers rehabilitation facilities for patients and is focused on ensuring patients receive the best possible care prior to discharge.
The team at Sam Davies ward, led by Ward Manager Linda Edwards, wanted to raise awareness of the wide ranging work it has been doing to support unpaid carers – from developing a dedicated room for carers to take a break and even stay overnight when visiting relatives on the ward, to hosting carers meetings in popular locations outside the ward.
The ward has also taken innovative steps to ensure carers have the right environment in which they can share sensitive – and often vital – information about the people they are caring for.
Linda explains: “We often need to know specific things about our patients’ background, and the person that cares for them is often best placed to provide this information. Our patients have many idiosyncrasies and by speaking to their carers we can best understand them and what they need.
We want to create an environment in which carers feel comfortable and supported to have what can be difficult conversations, as well as a space that they can find information about being an unpaid carer and what that means. We want people to be able to say if they aren’t managing or that they can’t cope. Ultimately we want a patient’s discharge to be as safe as possible for all parties.
Our carers’ room on the ward gives people the chance to take a break and stay overnight if they need.
It’s a relaxed room, away from the bustle, that gives carers a chance to just unwind and relax for as long as they need. We even had someone from New Zealand stay with us recently!
We do trial packages of care for carers, to help people see what we can potentially do to help people in their own homes after discharge. It’s about giving people choices and making things as easy as possible for carers and the people they care for, even under complex circumstances.
We are over the moon to have received the Carer Friendly accreditation silver award for our work with carers on the ward. Carers play such a vital role in helping us care for the patients staying on the ward – they enable us to do our job better. I am so proud of my team who’ve worked incredibly hard to secure Carer Friendly accreditation.”