Maternity Patient Meal Service
Posted by: karin.bond at 8:48 am on September 20th, 2022
Maternity Patient Meal Service
The CHoICE catering team actively seek feedback on the service quality and variety of food they provide to patients across Sunderland hospitals.
As part of this feedback, the team decided to explore alternative methods of service, to enhance the flexibility of the service offered, particularly in this instance on our Maternity unit, in response to recent patient feedback.
After considering several options, an innovative one portion meal concept, which offers to make meals available at any time during the day or night, was launched for a trial period in June 2022, on the Maternity Unit.
With the full engagement of the Ward Management Team within the Maternity Unit at Sunderland Royal Hospital, it was collectively agreed as it was apparent there was an appetite for change.
The existing service within the maternity unit, the main meal service was at set meal times each day. The unit can hold up to 36 patients both at Ante and Post-natal stages, so serving 36 meals at once, was a real challenge in its self, without the added challenge of knowing not all patients would be ready or available for their meal at a set time.
Due to this nature of the Maternity Unit, not everyone could or wanted to eat at the same time, as births were never scheduled to happen outside of mealtimes! The challenge was to enhance and increase choice of meals, to be instantly available at all times, while ensuring no increase in food waste, and if possible, reducing the burden of meal service on ward staff.
This was driven based on our discussions with patients and ward staff, and a survey was carried out by the Maternity Units Patient Feedback Group. The results of this survey advised that there were problems with meals being provided out of hours and outside of core meal times. Patients wanted to be offered more than toast or sandwiches.
The option preferred was influenced by CHoICE Facilities own Food Network, a food company specialising in the supply of readymade meals for the healthcare market.
Within their product range is a wide range of single portion meals that can be offered at any time of the day or night. The menu option list is long and caters for all diets and complies with the NHS nutritional guidelines.
To add confidence to this option, was the fact that the same concept had been provided to another local Maternity unit very successfully for the last 8 years.
The meals provided come in unique packaging that allows for the meal to be presented onto the plate as if served A La Carte.
After visiting the local maternity hospital who are currently using the single meal portion system to witness in action, encouraged the team that this was a system well worth trying at Sunderland.
Initially for a 3-month trial, starting in June 2022. The early feedback from the trial has been encouraging, with very positive feedback from patients and ward staff alike. The number of main meals provided has reduced in volume from the previous system, while increasing the range of choice and reducing food waste. With a wider menu choice and out of hours meal service now established, the unique meal packaging, enabling local heating and service direct to plate has also simplified the task of serving meals patients.
All wards are welcome to learn more about this alternative method of providing patient meals, as only be seeing it first hand, will help you realise the potential of this as the patient meal service of the future?
