The Northern Trust is one of five health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland. The Trust provides a range of health and social care services to a population of approximately 479,000 people across a geographical area of 1,733 square miles, making it the largest geographical trust in Northern Ireland.
The Trust also provides services to Rathlin, the only inhabited island off the coast of Northern Ireland. Services are delivered from over 150 facilities including two major general hospital sites, a mental health hospital, local community hospitals, health centres, social services, and a significant network of community services as well as provision of care in the home.
Antrim Area Hospital is one of the busiest hospitals for unscheduled care services in Northern Ireland. The Hospital has 366 beds for acute care. In addition, it offers obstetrics, neonatal services, paediatrics, palliative care and renal dialysis, as well as a specialist dental unit.
David is the Catering Production Manager at Antrim Area Hospital; he has been in this role for two years, prior to this David worked for the trust as a catering supervisor then an assistant manager, totalling four years now for the trust.
David is responsible for the patient meal services but more recently has also been managing the retail areas to cover absences in the team. This has given David a great insight to both retail and patient feeding and an opportunity to see what offers could be used in both areas.
The patient food production area has changed a few times over the last few years, originally a cook chill freeze operation which moved to a plated system, which is in the process of changing again, to a hot line bulk service operation.
David’s challenges are familiar story to other trusts, with staffing levels and recruitment being an ongoing challenge.
Despite these challenges David and his team have maintained the 5 star environmental health food hygiene rating, and have been successful in winning a Customer Service Excellence Award (CSE).
The Customer Service Excellence standard tests in great depth those areas that research has indicated are a priority for customers, with particular focus on delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude. There is also emphasis placed on developing customer insight, understanding the user’s experience and robust measurement of service satisfaction.
Customer Service Excellence is designed to operate on three distinct levels
- As a driver of continuous improvement. By allowing organisations to self assess their capability, in relation to customer focused service delivery, they are able to address areas and methods for improvement.
- As a skills development tool. By allowing individuals and teams to explore and acquire new skills in the area of customer focus and customer engagement, they can build their capacity for delivering improved services;
- As an independent validation of achievement. By allowing organisations to seek formal accreditation to the Customer Service Excellence standard, they can demonstrate their competence, identify key areas for improvement and celebrate their success.
This year also saw the team winning a Hospital Caterers Association (HCA) award at the annual Leadership and Development Forum.
The patient catering service located in Antrim Area Hospital feeds approximately 700 patients three times per day. Antrim also produces all meals for Whiteabbey Hospital and the Moyle Hospital. The menu runs on a two week cycle, examples of lunch and evening meal menus are provided below:
Lunch Menu
Evening Menu
All patient meal orders are took via electronic devices by the ward team, which has helped improve reductions in waste levels and ensures the patients get what they ordered.
David is supported with the power of three ethos, with support from the clinical teams including Dietetics and Speech and Language Therapy. The kitchen runs with four chefs and a team of food production assistants catering for all differing dietary needs for patients including renal and modified texture meals. All wards have their own ward pantries so patients can be offered items and snacks outside of the mealtime with snack bags available to order out of hours too. Hot meals and snack packs are also available to patients in the emergency department.
David is keen to overcome obstacles in the supply chain and framework, with so much farmland and produce around the hospital; David would like to source more of his ingredients closer to the hospital where possible and get to know and work with the local farmers and suppliers, putting back into the community and economy. This is something that isn’t working as well as David would like to at the moment. David is passionate about the service he and his team provide for patients, with an interest to engage and learn from others and work through the challenges faced to be able to source food of the provenance of the area.
Given Northern Irelands sensitive past it is important that as an organisation we ensure neutrality and remain mindful and respectful of its past, to ensure inclusion of all sections of the community. Therefore, David would suggest that any branding in relation to Northern Ireland should omit the word ‘British’ and be replaced with ‘Love Northern Irish Produce/Food’.
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