Musgrove Park Hospital

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• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

We looked for evidence that people were always treated with kindness, empathy and compassion. We checked that people’s privacy and dignity was respected, that they understood that they and their experience of how they were treated and supported mattered. We also looked for evidence that every effort was made to take people’s wishes into account and respect their choices, to achieve the best possible outcomes for them.

This key question was not included in the previous inspection of maternity services.

This key question has been rated good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

We have not awarded this service a score for Caring.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Caring.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

Women we spoke with consistently reported staff treated them with kindness, compassion, and dignity. We noted staff introduced themselves, listened attentively and communicated in a clear and accessible way. Staff demonstrated a commitment to holistic person-centred care, including asking general health questions including emotional wellbeing.

We observed efforts made to make a family feel comfortable during caesarean section. There was good communication with explanation about what was happening, music was played throughout the procedure and privacy, and dignity was preserved by reducing unnecessary exposure and the use of screens.

The service performed above the national average (7.4) for the CQC maternity survey 2025 question ‘thinking about your stay in hospital, if your partner or someone else close to you was involved in your care, were they able to stay with you as much as you wanted?’ with the result of 9.0.

During staff handovers, we observed team members demonstrated respect for the individual needs of each woman. Staff approached care discussions with empathy and a non-judgmental attitude.

The service used maternity and neonatal voices partnership (MNVP) to gain feedback from mothers and pregnant people. Recent examples of feedback included “every midwife I met was incredible at Musgrove.” Another said “community midwife and midwifery team at MPH were absolutely amazing. All were great at communicating and explaining things, empathetic and caring.” Leaders told us how they valued coproduction with the insight gained from MNVP to help shape service developments.

The bereavement suite had no restrictions on length of stay.

The results of the CQC Maternity Survey 2025 (women were eligible for the survey if they had a live birth in February and in some cases January 2025) showed in comparison with other trusts, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust scored about the same for 51 questions and better than expected for the remaining 7 questions.

There had been 7 responses to the Friends and Family Test for January and February 2026. Two of these responses related to poor experiences “staff distracted by other things, not able to focus on the correct patient. Staff not freely available to reach out to whilst in maternity triage.” The other related to a long wait in antenatal clinic to see the doctor. The remaining 5 responses were positive “staff were reassuring and made me feel completely at ease. They went above and beyond to ensure I saw my baby straight away and the postnatal care team were lovely too”, “the staff are absolutely fantastic, the nicest set of nurses, doctors and midwives I’ve ever seen in a hospital” and “from start to finish the support from the midwives was incredible. The care they provided was nothing short of brilliant, every step of the way they explained everything and nothing was too much for them”.

However, delays and the environment were themes for negative feedback including noise and lack of privacy on the ward. Comments included “its very noisy and difficult to get rest”, “I was surprised by how open the ward is, when 1 baby cries it can wake the others” and “it’s difficult for staff to maintain confidentiality due to the close proximity of other patients”.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Women’s needs and preferences were understood and reflected in their care throughout pregnancy and birth. Women mostly reported feeling listened to, and feedback included “excellent antenatal care from community midwife. Will miss her terribly as she has been fabulous and amended her approach to suit me”.

Staff respected individual needs and demonstrated a non-judgmental approach, including when supporting women with mental health concerns. Positive feedback included “no question was silly, my feelings and worries felt totally validated, the advice was so good, and the midwife was not judgmental in the slightest.” Emotional support was available, and the service provided a bereavement suite with specialist midwife support.

Information on spiritual support, treatments, local services, patient rights, and feedback processes was accessible. Staff made information leaflets available in languages spoken by patients. Interpretation services were available, with face-to-face support requiring advance booking. If an interpreter was required, appointment times would be increased to allow more time for questions.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Women told us they had choice and control over their care. We heard staff listened to individual concerns and preferences and did their best to accommodate individual needs. The service had produced a care outside of guidance policy, so staff were able to provide support that empowered women to make decisions about their care with informed decision-making and consent when seeking care outside of national and local recommended guidance. For example, we were told about a woman who wanted a VBAC breech homebirth (VBAC is a vaginal birth after caesarean and is generally attempted in a hospital setting due to the risk of rupture. A breech birth occurs when a baby is positioned bottom or feet first, rather than head down and they carry a higher risk of complications). Staff spoke with the mother, so she understood the risks and the decision was made to continue with the homebirth. Feedback from the mother regarding their birth preference was positive “thank you for forging this path for our baby to be born safely and naturally in the breech position at home. I could see the preparation and skills leading up to the birth. Thank you for creating an on-call team with the clinical experience that meant the best chances of a good outcome. You took so much time to sit and discuss and created a whole eco system for me to have a home birth.”

Staff spoke with women, and their families in a way they could understand, using communication aids where necessary. In the 2025 CQC maternity survey, people who had used the service gave a score of 8.9 out of 10 (10 being the highest) when asked about whether they were involved in decisions about their care during labour and birth. This score was about the same as other trusts.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff responded to people’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

Staff understood people’s needs, views and wishes. We observed women and their families being greeted by staff who told them their names. We observed staff listening to women and acting on their wishes.

We observed a caring response to a new dad who was concerned after the newborn and infant physical examination (NIPE) where a heart murmur had been detected. Staff reassured the dad and arranged for a sling so skin on skin contact with the baby could be established. They encouraged and supported the dad and maintained privacy using a screen.

Community staff described how they supported women with specific needs. They assessed individual requirements and coordinated with other services to provide appropriate support. We observed caring interactions with a mother who was needle phobic and anxious during a blood test. The midwife responded to immediate questions and provided reassurance which ensured the mother was comfortable and relaxed.

The service performed above the national average (7.4) for the CQC maternity survey 2025 question ‘did you feel that midwives gave you enough support and advice to feed your baby?’ with the result of 7.9. We were told how the community midwife team had supported a new mother who did not have any family nearby. The mother had called the midwife, who was not at work on that day, as the new mother was very anxious about feeding her newborn baby. The midwife made a request to the midwives on duty who went to visit the mother and supported her.

Women and their families could give feedback about their care and treatment.

We scored the service as 2. The evidence showed some shortfalls. The service did not always care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

Most staff reported feeling supported by colleagues, describing a collaborative team culture. However, some staff felt they were not supported by leaders. Concerns remained around the impact the closure and reopening of Yeovil maternity unit had on Musgrove maternity unit, future sufficient sustainable staffing levels, demand and workload and the impact this had on staff wellbeing.

Some midwives were redeployed to cover shortages in other areas within the maternity service. Although staff understood the reason why they had to cover other areas, they felt stressed and overstretched and this impacted their wellbeing.

Feeback from midwifery staff surveys demonstrated staff were below the comparator in the majority of questions relating to their job, managers and personal development. The service told us support had been provided to matrons focussing on higher sickness and concerns around wellbeing in the context of significant service change. Sessions were held with the team to discuss how to effectively manage supporting attendance and improve wellbeing.

Leaders had identified staff appraisals required enhancement from an administrative focus to more meaningful conversations. Managers were being supported to improve the process. The service had professional midwifery advocates (PMAs) and 1 of these was also a retention lead. (PMAs are experienced midwives who have received additional training to support their colleagues emotionally and professionally). This team were growing with 4 midwives undergoing the training and 2 had recently qualified. The PMAs used the national framework advocating for education and quality improvement (A-EQUIP) which included reflection, quality improvement, education, development and evaluation. The service had refreshed the staff debrief process after a serious incident. A new toolkit had been launched to support team debriefs and we were told PMAs offered sessions and liaised with the psychiatric team to attend these.

The service did not have an equity and inclusion lead but were planning to recruit to this role.

Feedback from the 2025 doctors in training survey demonstrated staff were within the interquartile range for all areas including overall satisfaction, supervision and teamwork.

There was a ‘feel good Friday’ initiative where feedback and thanks was shared among staff in the form of a weekly poster. We saw many staff members thanking each other for their continued support, guidance and supervision. Events were organised for staff, for example the celebration of midwifery month.