Wonderful opportunity to be invited and working with the hospital where I go for my chemo and radiotherapy treatment, now starting brachytherapy as well, as a Place assessor. This is a NHS England policy

Patient-led assessments of the care environment (PLACE) Good environments matter. Every NHS patient should be cared for with compassion and dignity in a clean, safe environment. Where standards fall short, they should be able to draw it to the attention of managers and hold the service to account. PLACE assessments will provide motivation for improvement by providing a clear message, directly from patients, about how the environment or services might be enhanced. April 2013 saw the introduction of PLACE, which is the new system for assessing the quality of the patient environment, replacing the old Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) inspections. The assessments will apply to hospitals, hospices and day treatment centres providing NHS funded care. The assessments will see local people go into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment supports patient’s privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance. It focuses entirely on the care environment and does not cover clinical care provision or how well staff are doing their job. Hope they roll it out to other hospital as they definitely need it.