Hospital maternity services 'require improvement'

Women in a maternity ward "weren't being kept as safe as they should be" inspectors have found.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has re-rated the maternity service at Great Western Hospital (GWH) in Swindon, Wiltshire as "requires improvement" after an inspection in January.

CQC deputy director of hospitals for secondary and specialist care, Catherine Campbell said while the service "responded well when women raised concerns", the inspection found 21 of the service's 138 maternity guidelines were out of date.

A spokesperson from GWH said "significant steps" had been taken to address the areas highlighted by the CQC and more work would be done to improve maternity services.

Campbell said inspectors had spoken to women in the maternity ward who said "staff were kind, supportive and understood them" but that there were key problems identified.

She continued: "Women sitting in the maternity care centre waiting area couldn't be seen by staff, who were based behind a closed door. If a woman became seriously unwell while waiting, there's a risk no one would notice quickly enough."

At the time of the inspection, there were 77 incidents that had not been reviewed or closed, some of which had been open for a long time.

Inspectors also found the service did not ensure women who were readmitted to the postnatal ward were always seen by a consultant within 14 hours.

The trust said this had improved but could not provide evidence to confirm it.

Campbell continued: "This matters because it means the service can't always learn from what's gone wrong as quickly as it should."

She added a lot of the problems identified in the report come from a "period of instability" in the ward's senior leadership team which had since been resolved.

The report on the inspection comes weeks after a rapid review by Baroness Valerie Amos found NHS maternity services in England were in need of a radical overhaul.

The overall rating for GWH was decided to be "good" and inspectors said staff were helpful and approachable.

Cara Charles-Barks, chief executive of BSW Hospitals Group which runs GWH, said teams had taken steps to make specific improvements in maternity care.

"We will continue to work to improve in this area and will now focus on reviewing all feedback shared to us by families so we can learn more quickly when things don't always go to plan, making improvements to the environment so women are able to access staff at all times and continuing to provide strong and visible leadership so staff feel well supported," she said.

"We remain ambitious and focused on continuing our journey of improvement to deliver the very best care for our local communities," she added.

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