Background to this inspection
Updated
3 February 2016
One Life Hartlepool provides a 24-hour minor injuries service, which was inspected as part of the acute urgent and emergency care provision by the trust and the outcome is reported here. The centre also provides a number of community services including speech and language therapy, audiology, podiatry, musculoskeletal and diabetes services. These services were reported upon in the community adult services inspection report for the trust. The department had 18,197 attendances in 2014-15.
The trust gained foundation status in 2007. It has a workforce of approximately 5500 staff and serves a population of around 400,000 in Hartlepool, Stockton and parts of County Durham. The trust also provides services in a number of community facilities across the areas supported, including Peterlee Community Hospital and the One Life Hartlepool.
Updated
3 February 2016
One Life Hartlepool provides a 24-hour minor injuries service. This was inspected as part of the acute urgent and emergency care service and the outcome is reported here. The centre also provides a number of community services including speech and language therapy, audiology, podiatry, musculoskeletal and diabetes services. We reported on these services in the community adult services inspection report for the trust.
The trust gained foundation status in 2007. It has a workforce of approximately 5500 staff and serves a population of around 400,000 in Hartlepool, Stockton and parts of County Durham. The trust also provides services in a number of community facilities across the areas supported, including Peterlee Community Hospital and the One Life Hartlepool.
We inspected One Life Hartlepool as part of the comprehensive inspection of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, which included this centre and community services. We inspected One Life Hartlepool on 7-10 July.
Overall, we rated One Life Hartlepool as good. We rated it as good for safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services.
We rated emergency and urgent care as good.
Our key findings were as follows:
- We found the minor injuries department to be very clean and equipment was well maintained.
- In the last twelve months, the trust reported that there had been no incidents of MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) or clostridium difficile in the minor injuries unit.
- Patients were able to access suitable nutrition and hydration. For relatives and carers, sandwiches and drinks were available from vending machines and water from water fountains.
- There were sufficient staff deployed to the unit to manage the volume of patients attending.
However, there were also areas of practice where the service needs to make improvements.
Importantly, the service should:
- Consider reviewing the trust process for prescribing antibiotics in the Minor Injuries Unit to enable them to be prescribed after 10pm when only one qualified nurse is on duty.
Professor Sir Mike Richards
Chief Inspector of Hospitals