The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has again rated maternity services at Goole and District Hospital, part of Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, as good, following an inspection in November.
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 at the midwifery led unit (MLU) within Goole and District Hospital. Following the inspection, the overall rating for maternity at Goole and District Hospital is rated as good overall. The area for safe has dropped from good to requires improvement, and well-led has gone up from requires improvement to good.
CQC didn’t look at how effective, caring, and responsive the service was at this inspection, therefore the ratings for these areas remain as good.
The overall rating for the trust, remains as requires improvement. The overall rating for Goole and District Hospital remains as good.
Carolyn Jenkinson, deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare, said:
“When we inspected Goole and District Hospital’s midwifery led unit, we found a continuation of skilled and hard-working staff who were complimentary about the department and its leadership team and felt able to speak to leaders about difficult issues and when things went wrong.
“We saw that managers reviewed incidents on a regular basis and investigated them thoroughly to ensure they didn’t happen again. They involved people and their families throughout the process to keep them fully aware.
“There were, however, some areas where improvements are needed. We found executive leaders didn’t always have clear oversight of Goole’s MLU. One of the ways we found this was a lack of good systems and processes to keep people safe when they came to the unit.
“For example, not all antenatal screening had been completed, meaning there was an incomplete picture of risk prior to birth which could place people and their babies at risk of harm.
“We will continue to monitor the trust, including through future inspections, to ensure people and their babies can continue to receive a good standard of care.”
Inspectors found the following during this inspection:
- Managers accurately calculated and reviewed the number midwives and maternity support workers needed for each shift in accordance with national guidance
- Staff could give examples of how to protect people from harassment and discrimination, including those with protected characteristics under the Equality Act
- Staff were competent and understood their roles and accountabilities
- Not all staff had completed training safeguarding specific for their role on how to recognise and report abuse
- Midwives didn’t complete maternal or neonatal risk assessments using a formal recognised tool to identify clinical deterioration
- Midwives carried out, but didn’t record, the fetal heart rate during labour which wasn’t in line with trust policy.