Sofas, Chairs, Beds, Mattresses, Bedrooms and Kitchens are all available from this family run furniture store based in St Leonards on Sea near Hastings and also EastbourneWe are stockists of great brands such as G plan, Parker Knoll, Vale, Ercol, Sherborne, Alstons, Cintique, Parker Knoll and Ekornes for sofas and chairs, Stressless and Sherborne for Recliner chairs, Gainsborough, Alstons and Sherborne for sofa beds, Hypnos Beds, Myers and Sealy beds, with Ercol, Sutcliffe and Nathan in our dining room collections. Home Office design and planning service using Hepplewhite fitted bedrooms will help you create that special environment you are searching for, to enjoy your home to its fullest Whether you are looking for an individual piece of furniture or to furnish a complete home, we can offer you a comprehensive selection of products from top British and European manufacturers, many of which are exclusive to us. All have been carefully selected by our buyers to give you good quality, stylish design and great value for money.
This superb choice is backed by over 100 years of experience to give you a first rate personal service from a family company which is second to none. We offer a free delivery and disposal service throughout a wide area, which includes the towns of Battle, Bexhill, Brighton, Crowborough, Fairlight, Heathfield, Hailsham, Hove, Hurst Green, Lewes, Pevensey, Polegate, Robertsbridge, New Romney, Rye, Seaford, Uckfield, Winchelsea in East Sussex along with the towns of Maidstone, Tenterden, Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Wadhurst, in Kent and we often deliver to other areas in the south east of England including the London boroughs, please ask for more informationA sedated patient suffered debilitating injury when a saline bag caused a warming mattress to reach temperatures high enough to cause full thickness burns, a court has heard. It is believed the bag was inadvertently placed on a sensor intended to monitor the mattress temperature, providing an inaccurate reading that prompted the equipment to continue heating.
Mike Wilcock, 56, awoke from a minor operation with third degree burns to his hip and buttock as a result of the incident at Maidstone Hospital on 25 September 2012. As he had been under anaesthetic, he had been unaware of what was happening and was therefore unable to alert medics. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust was today (18 December) ordered to pay almost £195,000 in fines and costs after an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identified failings with the way the warming equipment was used. Maidstone Crown Court was told that Trust staff did not have sufficient information and training to ensure the heated mattress was used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. Mr Wilcock required skin grafts at a specialist burns unit. He was unable to work for almost five months and also suffered a mild heart attack that was likely to have been attributed to the successive operations. The qualified sailing instructor has been forced to curtail the hobby he loves because he is no longer able to sit in a boat, and has been left with permanent scarring.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust was fined a total of £180,000 and ordered to pay a further £14,970 in costs after admitting breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. After the hearing HSE Inspector Dawn Smith commented: “Mr Wilcock suffered a serious debilitating injury that was entirely preventable had the Trust implemented a better system and procedures to ensure the warming mattress was used correctly. “While the precise circumstances of what happened are somewhat unusual, it is entirely foreseeable that failing to ensure that staff know how to use a piece of equipment may have a negative outcome. “The risk of injury from warming devices is well documented, and it also well known that anaesthetised patients require extra care and attention because they are not able to respond and react as they ordinarily would.” Mike Wilcock said: “What should have been a simple operation has left me disfigured and has disrupted my life and that of my family.
“My case highlights the critical nature of suitable and adequate training for staff in how to use and maintain equipment. “It also highlights that even with the most dedicated staff in the world things can go wrong, and when they do it is absolutely vital that a full and open investigation is carried out and that lessons are learned.”Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is a trust with approx. 800 beds spread across 2 large hospitals and a 12 bedded satellite ward at a cottage hospital. Joan Bedo, Tissue Viability CNS, and Mark Vince, Safety Thermometer Manager, discussed their trust’s improvement journey. Five years ago our pressure ulcer incidence was pretty high, we were above national averages. We took note of this and introduced a few different things to start improving. One of these was changing our mattress stock style, which made a difference. Another was a shift in the way people were looking at pressure ulcers, this was due to education plans we had put in place and also the fact that the new Deputy Chief Nurse made it his business to make sure the board new about pressure ulcer prevalence.
That ensured buy-in from the top level, which was important. I think that education was crucial in our improvement particularly as we involved as many people as we could in it. We had great engagement from ward managers with the education, we did two link-nurse days a year and we included the clinical support workers on those too. This was because they are on the frontline doing the work and reporting, so they need to be educated in pressure ulcers. We began using the Safety Thermometer around 18 months ago and since then we’ve seen 83% reduction in pressure ulcers, which is great. But at the start we had some issues around the reliability of our reporting as our numbers were not matching up to the Safety Thermometer numbers. There were leg ulcers and moisture lesions being reported incorrectly as pressure ulcers, this made us become very critical on what was being reported and improve our reliability. We ensured that every single hospital acquired pressure ulcer reported is attended by Tissue Viability Nurse, this allows us to determine what is actual pressure damage and what has been reported incorrectly.
The data is collected by myself (Mark Vince) and then sent to the Deputy Chief Nurse for sign-off and submission. Once it has been submitted, the Chief Nurse will review it and query any unusual spikes or lows. The communications team also have a look at it as it’s in the public domain and it is discussed at the monthly board meeting. The Tissue Viability team have also been reviewing the data to see which wards are going 30, 60 or 90+ days without pressure ulcers. We then feed this back to the teams and celebrate their successes. It helps us to confirm our numbers that we were previously collecting and spot trends. The trends include wards that have seen improvements and we are able to look at practice here, identify the learning and share this across all areas. The Safety Thermometer also helps with ‘early warning’; if a ward trend is adverse, we are able to provide support and intervention early. One piece of advice is to support wards or teams that may be struggling and then reward them when they improve.