Providing better care, privacy, dignity and comfort for patients

Single room care at the new Leighton Hospital

Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has a bold ambition to create a health and care neighbourhood, with a new Leighton Hospital at its heart.

One of the biggest changes in the new Leighton Hospital will be that every inpatient will have their own bedroom with ensuite facilities – as will all new NHS hospitals built under the government’s New Hospital Programme.

Single bedrooms will help to provide better care for patients by creating a calmer environment where they can rest, recover, and speak to staff in private. The personal space will also provide more dignity and comfort, allowing individuals to feel safer and more at ease throughout their stay.

These rooms will also be a very different working environment for staff. The Healthier Futures team at Mid Cheshire Hospitals have produced a range of materials to help staff to understand the clinical and operational benefits, alongside the improved patient experience that single room care will bring.

This includes a film produced at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital – which opened in 2022 with all single bedrooms – in which staff provide a ‘peer to peer’ perspective by sharing their experience of moving to single room care.

Together with the New Hospital Programme, the Healthier Futures team at Mid Cheshire Hospitals have also produced a fact sheet based on published evidence in support of single room care.

This highlights the close partnership working between two Trusts in our region that is helping to shape the national narrative on the transformational benefits that single room care will bring for NHS patients and staff.