Surrey maternity service told to take urgent action

Urgent action is needed after maternity services at a Surrey hospital were rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission, following an inspection in January at St Peter’s Hospital, run by Ashford and St Peter’s NHS Foundation Trust.

The trust waws told to “take urgent action to ensure women and babies … are not exposed to risk of harm”.

Amy Jupp, CQC deputy director of operations in the south of England, said “It’s concerning that the quality and safety of maternity care at St Peter’s Hospital has deteriorated since our last inspection.

“Risk wasn’t always well managed in the service.  Staff didn’t always have enough time to appropriately assess and action risks faced by women or to maintain accurate care records.”

Inspectors reported that although staff engaged well with women, some had not completed mandatory training, adding that “there were significant issues with risk assessments, especially in triage.”

Responding to the report, a spokesperson for the trust said “While there are some areas of good practice recognised by the CQC, we take the concerns raised in this report extremely seriously and, following the inspection in January, we have been taking urgent action to make significant improvements to the quality and safety of care provided.

“This includes increasing clinical staff in our maternity triage unit to care for women safely and increasing the size of the unit to improve the experience and dignity of those in our care.

“Action is being taken to improve staff training compliance and Infection Prevention and Control across the service.”

Chadwick Lawrence’s team of medical negligence lawyers have years of experience in high value and complex medical negligence compensation claims and have an excellent record.  The team have over 20 years experience in handling cases in which babies have been brain damaged or sustained other injuries as a result of medical negligence, and continue to represent many cerebral palsy children and young adults in medical negligence claims.  We also have a Court of Protection Deputy for many of the cerebral palsy and brain damaged clients that have been represented, so we can continue to support you after your case is settled.

Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (karenmotley@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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