VERY sick and dying patients are no longer being moved between hospital wards at night unless there is an urgent medical need.

Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust introduced a new policy to stop people being transferred to different areas overnight.

If the move is unavoidable, then staff will transfer patients early in the morning instead.

The change was brought in by the trust following a complaint to its patients advice and liaison services (Pals) about the “unnecessary distress and disorientation” caused to cancer patients in particular by being moved between wards late at night.

Other changes over the past year include extending the opening times of the children’s accident and emergency service at night, providing extra training for staff to improve care for patients with swallowing difficulties and reviewing the specialist eye services by increasing the number of consultants and improving the appointment system to reduce the number of delays and cancellations. The changes were highlighted in a report to the trust board by the Pals team.

The team dealt with almost 9,000 on-the-spot general advice and information requests over the last year while a further 3,627 were individual issues or concerns that were dealt with within one working day.

A total of 574 cases required a formal investigation under the NHS complaints procedure due to their complexity or the seriousness of the issues raised.

The report concluded: “The trust always sees complaints as an opportunity to address problems and improve patient safety.

“There has been an increase in the number of complaints about discharges, attitude of staff and outpatient appointments. To mitigate this, a number of actions have been taken.

“A West Sussex policy on managing hospital discharge has been introduced, a customer care programme has been launched across the trust and an assessment of the outpatient service is underway.”