The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN) provides tertiary paediatric healthcare services for children across NSW. During admission, parents stay alongside their child, providing comfort and emotional support. Consumer feedback has highlighted limitations parents and carers have in their ability to meet their own needs, in particular, accessing food when staying in hospital with their child.
Current and past inpatients and their families from SCHN were invited to participate in either a semi-structured interview or an anonymous survey to share their experience of mealtimes in hospital, during August 2022. Most parents and carers interviewed, 70% (n=18/26), indicated that they wanted better access to food whilst caring for their child in hospital. Issues impacting carer access to food included limited access to food offerings, inconsistent awareness and access to food preparation and storage facilities and hospital funded carer meals. In summary, the SCHN needed an organisational response to improve carer access to food.
The following solutions were developed in November 2022 in consultation with staff, consumers and carers and will be implemented in 2023-2024:
- The implementation of a designated delivery zone for food and grocery delivery at Sydney Children's Hospital and The Children's Hospital at Westmead.
- The installation of vending machines with high quality healthy meals and snacks for improved meal access.
- The exploration of the potential for a user pay system to access hospital provided food delivered to the patient's bedside.
- The provision of information about food options for parents and cares whilst staying in hospital, to be provided on admission.
Moving forward, we will survey parents and carers three months after each solution implementation to measure:
- if parents and carers are happy with their access to food
- if parents and carers use of the food service delivery window
- if parents and carers receive information on admission.
View this project's poster from the Centre for Healthcare Redesign graduation April 2023.
