Staff feel ‘frozen out and ignored’ at ‘inadequate’ services

Maternity services at University Hospital North Durham and Darlington Memorial Hospital have been downgraded from “good” to “inadequate” in Care Quality Commission reports, published today. 

The CQC noted a “concerning deterioration” in the care the two services provided, despite midwives telling managers they felt the service was unsafe.

Sue Jacques, chief executive of County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trust, which runs the hospitals, said the CQC’s findings would be taken “extremely seriously”.

The reports also said staff reported “feeling ‘frozen out’ or that their concerns were ignored by leaders” and that staff felt “‘continuity of carer’ was the trust’s main focus, despite depleted safe staffing levels, skill mix, and staff being pulled in to cover acute areas on a frequent basis”. Last year, trusts were told not to pursue continuity of carer models – which were previously championed by NHS England – unless they had adequate staffing levels to do so safely. 

Carolyn Jenkinson, the CQC’s deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare, said: “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.”

Ms Jenkinson added there had been more than 70 incidents in the maternity services over the past year where national screening standards or internal policies had not been followed. This, she said, “could place women, people using the service and their babies at risk”.

The inspections, which took place in March and were part of the CQC’s national maternity inspection programme, mean UH North Durham and Darlington Memorial Hospital’s overall ratings have dropped from “good” to “requires improvement”. County Durham and Darlington FT’s overall rating remains “good”.

Ms Jacques said the trust is “very disappointed” by the CQC’s findings.

She said: “We recognise the areas for improvement raised by the CQC. A lot of work has already taken place to make improvements in the highlighted areas since the inspection in March and we have developed focused action plans to improve safety and efficiency further.”