Adult inpatient survey 2023

This survey looks at the experiences of people who stayed at least one night in hospital as an inpatient.

People were eligible to take part in the survey if they stayed in hospital for at least one night during November 2023 and were aged 16 years or over at the time of their stay.

What we found

Results show that people’s experiences of inpatient care have deteriorated since 2020. The results for the 2023 survey remain generally consistent with 2022 and 2021 following significant declines for almost all questions in the 2021 survey compared with 2020.

Most respondents reported a positive experience in their interactions with doctors and nurses, such as being treated with respect, dignity, kindness and compassion and being included in conversations, generally remaining consistent with the previous year, although those receiving clear answers to questions and having confidence and trust has decreased slightly.

Discharge from hospital remains a challenging part of people’s experiences of care. Fewer respondents felt involved in decisions about their discharge from hospital, with less than half feeling they were given enough notice before being discharged. Over four in ten felt certain about what would happen with their care after leaving hospital.

Experiences of hospital waiting times have continued to decline. While elective patients remain generally positive about their experience of how long they had to wait before being admitted to hospital, with most rating the quality of information they received while on the waiting list as good, more people felt that they had to wait too long. Although just under half of elective patients reported no change to their health while waiting for admission, just over four in ten felt their health worsened.

Positive findings

Interactions with staff

• Most people (72% for both doctors and nurses) said they ‘always’ got answers to their questions they could understand, remaining consistent for doctors (73% in 2022), and a slight decrease for nurses (73% in 2022).
• 80% and 78% of respondents said they ‘always’ had confidence and trust in doctors and nurses respectively, although this has decreased slightly for both doctors (81% in 2022) and nurses (79% in 2022).
• Respondents who felt they were treated with respect and dignity has remained at 82% since 2021, while 80% said they were treated with kindness and compassion.

Meeting individual needs

• 70% of respondents said they were ‘always’ able to take medication they brought with them to hospital when they needed to.
• 75% of respondents said they were ‘always’ offered food that met any dietary needs or requirements they had.
• 88% said they got enough to drink during their time in hospital, which has remained consistent since 2020.

Involvement in care

• When asked about being included in conversations, 75% said both doctors and nurses ‘always’ included them, compared with 74% and 75% respectively in 2022.

Key areas for improvement

Patient discharge from hospital

• 29% said they had little to no involvement in decisions about their discharge (19% said they were ‘not very much’ involved and 10% said they were ‘not at all’ involved), compared to 25% in 2022, while 33% of respondents said they were involved ‘a great deal’, a statistically significant decrease of 4 percentage points from 2022.
• 48% of respondents said they were given enough notice about when they were going to leave hospital, remaining consistent with 2022.
• 46% said they ‘definitely’ received enough support from health or social care services after leaving hospital, unchanged since 2021, and remaining 5 percentage points lower than in 2020.
• 44% of respondents ‘definitely’ knew what would happen next with their care after leaving hospital, compared with 45% in 2022.

Waiting times

• 23% of elective patients said they would like to have been admitted ‘a bit sooner’ and 19% ‘a lot sooner’ (compared with 22% and 17% respectively in 2022), while 58% said they ‘did not mind waiting as long as they did’, compared with 61% in 2022.
• 43% of elective patients said their health deteriorated while waiting to be admitted to hospital, though 49% said their health remained the same.
• 18% of respondents felt they had to wait ‘far too long’ to get to a bed on a ward after admission, which remains 10-percentage points higher than in 2020.

Overall experience

• 51% of respondents rated their overall experience of inpatient care as a 9 or 10 (where 10 is a very good experience) compared with 50% in 2022. 4% of respondents reported a very poor experience overall with scores of 0 or 1, which remains unchanged since 2021.

How experience varies for different groups of people

People who were considered frail reported poorer than average experiences for all the questions analysed in the survey.

Similarly, respondents aged 16 to 50, those admitted for emergency care, or those with a disability, dementia or Alzheimer’s, a condition which affects their physical mobility, or ‘another long-term health condition’ reported poorer experiences of inpatient care for almost all questions we explored.

Respondents with a neurological condition reported poorer experiences for more than half of these questions.

In contrast, older people, male respondents, people who were in hospital for an elective admission, those who stayed in hospital for only one night, and those not considered frail or disabled generally reported better experiences across most areas of care.

Results for NHS trusts

A-Z list of inpatient survey results by NHS trust

Each trust has been provided with a benchmark report, which provides: detail of the survey methodology, headline results, the trust score for each evaluative question, banding for how a trust score compares with all other trusts. The reports also provide results at hospital site where data is available.

View these reports on the NHS surveys website.

Reports

Open data

Supporting information

How will results be used?

We will use the results from the survey to build an understanding of the risk and quality of services and those who organise care across an area. Where survey findings provide evidence of a change to the level of risk or quality in a service, provider or system, we use the results alongside other sources of people’s experience data to inform targeted assessment activities.

Other organisations

NHS trusts

Trusts, and those who commission services, use the results to identify and make the changes they need to improve the experience of people who use their services.

NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care

Information collected nationally in a consistent way is essential to support public and Parliamentary accountability. The results are used by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care for performance assessment, improvement and regulatory purposes.