Heatherwood and Wexham failing to protect patients

We have told Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to make urgent improvements to protect patients at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough.

Following a recent unannounced inspection, we issued six warning notices after it failed to meet the eight national standards below.

• Respecting and involving people who use services
• Care and welfare of people who use services
• Staffing
• Assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision
• Records
• Cleanliness and infection control
• Safety and suitability of premises
• Safety, availability and suitability of equipment

Our findings

During the inspection, we:

• had concerns over leadership and care delivery.
• received a number of comments from patients about the quality of nursing care and poor communication, and found that people’s privacy and dignity was not always respected.
• identified poor standards of cleanliness and inadequate infection control in some areas of the hospital.
• saw evidence of poor record keeping and an absence of care plans in some areas.
• saw staffing arrangements had not significantly improved since the last inspection - despite on-going recruitment, almost all the wards inspected were regularly short staffed.
• discovered that staff did not always feel they could raise concerns or make suggestions - a number of staff expressed concerns about bullying and harassment from managers, and in some cases, staff who had raised concerns with inspectors were reluctant to be named for fear of reprisals from their managers.

Visit Wexham Park Hospital for full details about our inspection and findings.