FORMER patients of North Cumbria's hospitals have praised the care they received from staff in a national inpatient survey.
Findings came from an Adult inpatient survey, conducted by the Care Quality Commission and published for the first time on August 26, 2026.
Over 58,130 former patients across 130 trusts were interviewed about their time in hospital.
CQC was looking at the experiences of patients who spent time in hospital in November 2025.
Of those surveyed, 518 had been patients of North Cumbria Integrated Care (NCIC).
The survey, conducted across participating NHS trusts, asked patients to rate their experiences in hospital, covering areas such as admission, care on the ward, and discharge.
North Cumbria received a patient score of 6.8 out of 10 on a section about hospital admissions and 7.8 for the hospital and ward environment, both in line with national averages.
Dr Gill Findley, Chief Nurse at NCIC said: "It is extremely encouraging to see that the majority of our patients have confidence in our health professionals, and were treated with kindness, dignity, respect, and compassion as we would expect.
"I am also pleased that we scored highly around respecting people’s cultural and religious needs as it is so important to treat all patients as individuals and take note of the what matters most to them while they are in hospital."
While the trust's scores were "about the same" as those for trusts across the country, NCIC "performed better than expected" for addressing patients’ individual needs, scoring 8.4 out of 10 in this category.
It received particularly strong results for meeting cultural and religious needs, scoring 9.4 out of 10 for considering individual cultural preferences and 9.3 for supporting religious requirements such as providing space for prayer or meditation.
Doctors and nurses received an average score of 8.8 and 8.7 out of 10 respectively.
Patients gave a collective score of 9.2 for confidence and trust in the NCIC nurses who treated them.
Patients also gave a score of 8.6 for doctors answering their questions in a way they could understand.
Dr Findley said: "The key areas we need to make improvements is around information provided to patients and their family/carers about when they will be discharged from hospital, medications to be taken home and what happens next when they return home.
"We currently have a focused piece of work ongoing around improving our patient flow and discharges.
She said: "We know that patients recover better after a period of illness in the place they call home so we need to make sure that patients are discharged at the right time and are equipped with the information and aftercare in the community they need.
"In turn, this means patients who need urgent care and treatment can be admitted faster."
The trust scored 6.2 for whether patients felt they waited the right amount of time for admission, 7.3 for the quality of information given while on the waiting list, and 6.8 for the wait to be taken to a ward bed.
In the hospital and ward section, the trust scored 7.1 for patients not being disturbed by noise from other patients at night, and 8.8 for room or ward cleanliness.
Dr Findley said: "National survey results are a helpful for us to understand our patient's experiences, and identify where we are doing well, and where we need to make improvements.
"We will examine these results in detail alongside our other methods of collecting patient feedback so we can continue to make changes to meet our patients' needs.
"We know that these results perhaps don’t reflect everyone’s experiences in our care and if anyone has concerns I encourage them to contact us via our Patient Advice and Liaison service."
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