Mercy Hospital in Dunedin is proud to be into its third year of Dining Out accreditation with Coeliac NZ. 

Food is a vital component of the hospital experience for most people and a key part of their recovery.  For those with allergies and intolerances, eating away from home can be stressful and difficult, potentially adding to the challenges of hospitalisation.  Being able to provide confidence and reassurance to patients around food safety in all its wider aspects is important to Mercy Hospital.

Room Service for in-patients has been in place for three years now at Mercy, and has allowed better information collection on patient allergies, intolerances and dietary preferences.  We know that coeliac disease and gluten intolerance are the most common allergy and intolerance amongst our patient group.  Many other patients choose low- or no-gluten diets.  That’s before we even start looking at the needs of our day patients, staff, doctors and café customers!  The Dining Out Programme is therefore very relevant for Mercy.

Jackie Wilde, Support Services Manager, says “we are always mindful of applying our core value of Hiranga or Excellence to our food service, and a key part of excellence is continually improving.”

Maintaining Dining Out accreditation has been embedded into Mercy’s processes, with Head Chef Rachel Bond (herself coeliac) working through the DOP checklists and carrying out regular audits of ingredients and processes.  Gluten-free training for new Food Services staff is part of the induction process, and recent improvements have ensured this extends to part-time and casual staff.

Dining Out accreditation provides reassurance to Mercy’s coeliac patients that they can trust that our gluten-free food truly is gluten free.  Mercy is continually looking for new ways to use the Dining Out logo to reassure patients, staff and customers.  The logo currently features on newer copies of the Room Service menu, in the public Marinoto Café, on the Hospital’s website and on Mercy’s staff meals online ordering form.

Mercy Hospital were very impressed with the DOP toolkit, commenting that it aligned perfectly with their quality process improvement model.  Their use of the toolkit to achieve accreditation has been written up as a ‘Quality Project’ and won an internal Quality Award.  Mercy is now taking their Dining Out project write up to the Quality Awards at the NZPSHA (NZ Private Surgical Hospitals Association), because of its applicability through the sector.  Mercy Hospital would encourage other hospitals around the country to work with Coeliac New Zealand on this well thought-out programme.