Brigstock Medical Centre Also known as Brigstock and South Norwood Partnership

On this page

• Overview
• Learning culture
• Safeguarding
• Involving people to manage risks
• Safe and effective staffing

We looked for evidence that people were protected from abuse and avoidable harm.

At our last assessment, we rated this key question as Good. At this assessment, the rating remains the same.

This service scored 69 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The service had a proactive and positive culture of safety, based on openness and honesty. They listened to concerns about safety and investigated and reported safety events. Lessons were learnt to continually identify and embed good practice.

People felt supported to raise concerns and felt staff treated them with compassion and understanding. Managers encouraged staff to raise concerns when things went wrong. The practice had significant event meetings every quarter and all staff could attend the meetings and bring any concerns they had. During staff meetings, the whole team discussed and learnt from clinical issues. We saw meetings minutes to confirm lessons learnt were shared with staff. Staff felt there was an open culture, and that safety was a top priority. The provider had processes for staff to report incidents, near misses and safety events.

There was a system to record and investigate complaints, and when things went wrong, staff apologised and gave people support.

The service worked with people and healthcare partners to understand what being safe meant to them and the best way to achieve that. They concentrated on improving people’s lives while protecting their right to live in safety, free from bullying, harassment, abuse, discrimination, avoidable harm and neglect. The service shared concerns quickly and appropriately.

Safeguarding policies were in place and known to staff, who were appropriately trained in safeguarding procedures. All staff we spoke with were aware of the safeguarding lead in the practice and how to escalate any concerns they had. However, not all staff had completed safeguarding training to the level recommended in line the intercollegiate safeguarding guidance. The practice maintained a list of vulnerable people and acted on concerns working in partnership with other organisations. We spoke with the partners of the practice, and they demonstrated that they had good oversight of the current patients on both the child and adult safeguarding lists.

The service worked with people to understand and manage risks. They provided care to meet people’s needs that was safe, supportive and enabled people to do the things that mattered to them.

Emergency equipment was available and maintained. There were areas of improvement around the location of defibrillator to ensure that it was accessible in the quickest way in the event of needing to use it. Staff told us they would review this as a priority ensuring risks were mitigated. Staff could recognise a deteriorating patient and knew of action to take. Patients were advised on risks related to their condition and actions to take if their condition deteriorated.

The service made sure there were enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff, who received effective support, supervision and development. They worked together well to provide safe care that met people’s individual needs.

There were a range of clinical and non-clinical roles within the practice. We found training was up to date for staff, however some non-clinical staff had not completed level 2 child and adult safeguard training and had not completed mental capacity training. When we raised this with the practice they shortly after the assessment provided evidence to show that staff had completed correct levels of role specific training. Learning needs and development of staff was managed appropriately, and staff were working within their agreed areas of competence. We reviewed 7 staff files and identified that 2 staff members had a disclosure and barring services (DBS) check undertaken by a previous employer and 1 staff member did not have a DBS check, when we raised this with the practice they immediately got the relevant checks done. For 2 staff members we did not see evidence of all routine immunisations, when this was raised with the practice shortly after the assessment they provided us with proof that staff had the necessary immunisations.