Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital

On this page

• 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 women were always treated with kindness, empathy and compassion. We checked if women’s privacy and dignity was respected, that they understood and if their experience of how they were treated and supported mattered. We looked for evidence of women’s wishes having been considered, if their choices were respected, to achieve the best possible outcomes for them.

At our last inspection we rated this key question requires improvement. At this inspection the rating improved to good. Women’s outcomes were consistently good, and women’s feedback confirmed this.

This service scored 75 (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 always treated women with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

We received positive feedback from women and their families about their experience of the service. Women and their partners and relatives described staff as “amazing”, “helpful” “professional”, “knowledgeable” and “personable”. Women told us staff introduced themselves to them and asked how they were.

Women and their partners, we spoke with during the inspection, had nothing but praise for their experience when attending the triage department during pregnancy. There were no negative comments about their experience at all. Visitors were allowed between 4pm and 7pm daily, up to a maximum of 2 visitors per bed. Women could have 1 person stay with them.

Staff maintained women’s privacy and dignity, and women we spoke to told us they felt this was respected by staff. We observed staff drew curtains around the bed when they attended to women. A chaperone service was available, with signs displayed to show information about this. Women we spoke with confirmed they were provided with a chaperone for intimate examinations.

We saw many ‘thank you’ cards and gifts from women and their families, such as personalised wall art, displayed around the areas we visited, expressing gratitude to staff for caring for them.

The service treated women as individuals and made sure women’s care, support and treatment met their needs and preferences. Staff took account of women’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

During the inspection we reviewed the notes of 8 women and found the staff had taken the time to know the women’s individual circumstances and create an individual care plan. This was confirmed by the women and their families we spoke with during the inspection.

Maternity had developed a unique service called ‘Your Voice is Heard’ to capture the experience of all women who used their maternity service. The service had a patient experience team which included 2 full-time patient experience midwives and 2 maternity support workers. ’Your Voice is Heard’ was launched in May 2022 across all maternity sites and now included neonatal services.The team met quarterly to discuss the themes and trends of the feedback they had received. All feedback was logged and shared. This included health visitors or paramedics who had been singled out for praise. The most common positive feedback was the care by the midwife (this included from triage throughout the pregnancy to the birth), the way the family were spoken to and feeding support.

Feedback was also gathered through the friends and family test. The current feedback was 98% positive and just 2% negative. Negative feedback was not feeling listened to, a long wait to be discharged and wait for medicines to take home from pharmacy.

The service promoted women’s independence, so women knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Women and those important to then told us staff ensured they were fully informed of their rights. During the inspection we spoke with 15 women and their families and asked them if they were fully informed about their care. We were told that consent was always sought before any procedure, and we saw this was documented in the medical notes. Women told us they knew how to make a complaint although no-one we spoke with had any complaints about their care.

One woman told us she had had lots of leaflets explaining what was happening, she was very involved in her scans and all staff tried to do ‘the right thing by her and her baby’. Other women who suffered from anxiety told us staff had been offered extra psychological and emotional support during her pregnancy.

The service listened to and understood women’s needs, views and wishes. Staff always responded to women’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

The early pregnancy unit employed women’s health counsellors who were trauma based accredited to support women who had miscarried their baby. They provided memory boxes for early pregnancy loss. They were advertising for an accredited nurse or midwife to support women with lower-level anxiety in their early pregnancy. Staff told us they were not always informed about women who had attended the accident and emergency and had an early pregnancy miscarriage and were unable to offer the same level of support.

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care. All staff we spoke with, without exception, were positive about working in this maternity unit. They told us they were valued by all levels of leadership. They told us the culture had changed in the last two years since the new senior leadership had come to the trust.

We spoke with two midwives who had returned from a period of extended leave and told us their line manager had been supportive of their learning needs and developed targeted reasonable adjustments to support them as they got back up to speed. Staff told us this was a psychologically safe place to work and develop professionally. We saw examples of events which celebrated staff success and marked important days such as the International Day of the Midwife. Student midwives were part of the wider team and told us they felt safe and nurtured during their placements. Staff told us how much they had enjoyed the maternity support work afternoon tea.

Teams had developed close multidisciplinary relationships which in turn improved the care of women, their family and their baby. Staff welcomed constructive challenge, and every member of the team had a voice to express themselves. This was a sign of a good and safe culture within the department.

Staff of all grades and disciplines had protected time to attend training and study days. This included mandatory training for the team and training for extended clinical roles.