- NHS hospital
Derriford Hospital
Assessment report published 27 February 2026
Contents
Ratings - Urgent and emergency services
Our view of the service
Derriford Hospital provides a range of NHS hospital services as part of University Hospitals Plymouth (UHP) NHS Trust. It is the largest specialist teaching hospital in the Southwest peninsula and the region’s major trauma centre.
We carried out this assessment of Urgent & Emergency Care (UEC) services from 15 to 16 October 2025 to determine if improvements had been made following our previous inspection in March 2024. At the previous inspection we rated UEC as requires improvement. At this assessment the rating remains requires improvement as we identified some continued and new breaches of regulations. Although the service had made significant improvements since our last visit (some breaches had been addressed), they were still failing to provide safe care and treatment. Staff were not always able protect patients’ privacy and dignity, long waits for medical reviews, monitoring of venous thromboembolism and sepsis, staff did not always receive training, infection prevention controls were not always followed and did not have good governance to assess and improve the quality of service. We identified breaches in regulation relating to safe care and treatment, dignity and respect and good governance. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found during this assessment.
The rating for UEC has been combined with ratings of the other services from the last assessments and the overall rating of Derriford Hospital remains requires improvement. See our previous reports for a full picture of all other services at Derriford Hospital.
People's experience of this service
We found some elements of care for patients did not meet the expected standards. There were long waits to be triaged (assessed), treated, referred to other services, admitted to hospital or discharged. During this assessment we spoke with patients who experienced long waits in all areas of the emergency department.
Most patients and any family or carers we spoke with were positive about staff treating them. They told us staff treated them with kindness and provided good care and treatment. Some patients told us staff communicated with them well, they felt listened to and described staff as “brilliant” and their treatment as “very positive”. However, some patients said waits were long and they were not kept informed about what was happening.