The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated the two maternity services run by County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust as inadequate following an inspection in March.
The inspection was carried out as part of CQC’s national maternity inspection programme.
The programme aims to provide an up to date view of the quality of hospital maternity care across the country, and a better understanding of what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.
Inspectors looked at the areas of safe and well-led in the maternity services. Following the inspection, the services were rated:
- University Hospital North Durham – the ratings for safe and well-led have gone down from good to inadequate which means the overall rating for maternity services at University Hospital North Durham is inadequate
- Darlington Memorial Hospital – the rating for safe and well led have also gone down from good to inadequate which means the overall rating for maternity services at Darlington Memorial Hospital is inadequate.
These ratings changes also mean that the overall ratings for University Hospital of North Durham and Darlington Memorial Hospital have gone down from good to requires improvement. The overall trust rating remains as good.
Following the inspection, CQC issued a warning notice to focus the trust’s attention on rapidly making the necessary improvements to how they were managing each maternity service.
Carolyn Jenkinson, deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare, said:
“When we inspected maternity services at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, it was concerning to see such a deterioration in the level of care being provided to women, people using the service and their babies.
“Across both maternity services, leaders urgently need to mitigate the negative impact of understaffing. We saw that staff had reported delayed inductions of labour, including babies categorised as high risk, due to understaffing. Midwives had told managers they found the unit was unsafe, but no improvement had been made and staff continued to work late, miss breaks, and take sick leave due to stress which is totally unacceptable.
“We were concerned that women and people using the service weren’t being observed or risk assessed appropriately which increased the risk of a delay in recognising when their condition deteriorated and that their care could be delayed. Following the inspection, however, trust leaders provided information on the action they had taken to improve this, including risk assessment on arrival, the provision of additional staff and the creation of a waiting area with call bells.
“We found multiple examples where screening tests hadn’t been carried out to safely manage the pregnancies of women and people using the service. There had been over 70 incidents over the past year where national screening standards or internal policies hadn’t been followed which could place women, people using the service and their babies at risk.
“It was positive, however, that staff were kind and worked well together, often under pressure, to benefit those in their care.
“We will continue to monitor the trust, including through future inspections, to ensure the necessary and rapid improvements are made so people using the service and their babies can receive safe and appropriate care.”
Inspectors found the following at both services:
- Senior leaders didn’t always support staff to develop their skills
- Not all staff had training in key skills needed for their roles
- The service didn’t always engage well with women people using the service, and the local community to plan and manage services
- Staff had limited awareness and understanding of the service’s vision and values and weren’t always able to apply them in their work
- Leaders didn’t operate effective systems and didn’t always manage risk and performance well
- Staff didn’t consistently carry out checks on equipment
- Staff didn’t always feel respected, supported, and valued.