The Quality of Care Committee (CQC) found that the NHS, one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK, had failed to make the necessary service improvements when it visited in October and November, despite earlier warnings from the security guard. In addition to the concerns of the general trusting public, a focused maternity inspection raised important questions about how her service operates. As for the medical staff at the Sheffield Trust, the service “did not have sufficient medical staff with the appropriate qualifications, skills and experience to protect women and babies from preventable injuries and to provide proper care and treatment.” the report said. It’s less than a week since the Ockenden report on the UK’s biggest maternity scandal at Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford NHS Hospital concluded that 201 babies and nine mothers could or would have survived if an NHS trust had better care. Police are investigating more than 600 cases linked to the scandal, the Guardian reported last week. The CQC previously identified significant patient safety concerns in Sheffield in March 2021, which led to the deterioration of the maternity service rating to inadequate. His re-examination, he said, found that “there was little or no improvement in the quality of care received by patients; in some areas the service had deteriorated further.” She also had “significant concerns about the evaluation of patients in the ward unit, maternity staffing and delays in the onset of labor,” she added. The inspectors found that staff did not interpret, classify or scale a baby’s heart rate correctly, an issue raised by Donna Ockenden in her review of the Shrewsbury scandal. Despite the fact that fetal monitoring was identified as an area that needs attention in 2015 and 2021, the most recent review “noted that the agency continued to have no urgent need and pace in implementing actions and recommendations to mitigate these risks, exposing patients to risk of harm “. The report added: “We were informed by staff that there were often difficulties in requesting additional assistance when women’s health was deteriorating. The staff told us that there were cases where they “bumped” for medical help in more than one case before help arrived. “We have also been told on several occasions that there was a case where an emergency call buzzer was pulled after receiving no response to multiple bleep calls.” The CQC was informed that there were “very dangerous staffing levels in childbirth”, while fetal monitoring was not always completed on time and medications and observations were delayed. The CQC also stated that it was concerned that not all incidents or serious incidents had been investigated, that the root cause had not been identified, or that lessons had not been learned. Exactly the same concern was expressed in Shrewsbury. The overall rating of the trust has been downgraded from “good” to “needs improvement”. Her CEO, Kirsten Major, said she was “devastated” by the findings and took them “extremely seriously”. He added: “We have already taken steps to help us improve, including hiring more than 500 new nurses who are now working in the wards and there have been changes in our maternity services, including investing in more midwives.”
