- Ambulance service
St John Ambulance - South Region
Report from 23 October 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Emergency and urgent care
Our view of the service
We carried out a responsive assessment on 11th July to the 17th of July 2024. Because we received information of concern about a lapse in leadership, bullying, under reporting of incidents, lack of urgent and emergency equipment, driver incidents, poor driver training and medicines management. We inspected 15 quality statements across our key questions for safe, effective and well led. We have combined the scores for these areas with scores from the last inspection. St John Ambulance provides regulated activities for urgent and emergency care. However, events work carried out by the service does not fall within the scope of this inspection. There was a good safety culture when incidents were investigated, learning was shared with staff to promote good practice. Staff provided safe care and treatment and the environment we inspected was safe and well maintained and contained adequate vehicles and equipment. The service had a small portion of paid staff and a larger volunteer crew base which included registered healthcare practitioners including paramedics, doctors and nurses who volunteered 240 practice hours a year each to support service delivery. Staff delivered good care and treatment following evidence-based practice. However, because the service had seen a change in leadership within the reporting period and had been forced to review its financial position, there were gaps in the leadership team which meant leaders were not always accessible or approachable, although recruitment was in progress for new leaders. Staff often found it hard to speak up about their concerns. Local governance process was minimal, and the service had risks. However, work streams to make improvements were still in their infancy. Some staff told us they were discouraged from speaking up or raising concerns.
People's experience of this service
The service conveyed patients on behalf of the NHS when required. Therefore, we were unable to speak with patients who had used the service. However, feedback we saw was positive and there were no complaints from people during the reporting period.