The CQC inspection team has departed and we await the report with trepidation. It seems like a lot more than two weeks since we received the warning call of their impending visit. Two weeks of stress, paperwork, cleaning and lost appointments. As we approached D-Day things began to happen, items were removed or relocated, more instructions put on my wall, and by the end of it my room was a stranger to me.
Was the exercise worth the loss of appointments and additional stress on a beleaguered service?
Portable heaters, soap substitute and moisturising hand cream vanished, but a new coloured bin had appeared with detailed instructions on what items were to be placed in the different bins present. This confusion and disruption was all in the name of ensuring services are safe, caring and effective.
The practice was closed for a briefing on the afternoon prior to the visit. On the day the nursing staff were particularly stressed with their every movement being questioned and scrutinised, they felt they were forced out of their normal practice and behaving in an artificial way. It took another two weeks to get the practice back to its functional normality, and eventually the items that had been removed were recovered.
So, was the exercise worth the loss of appointments and additional stress on a beleaguered service? It felt like a royal visit, and was probably just as pointless, apart from the spring clean.
