Nottingham City 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 the service supported staff and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect. We found that people were treated with kindness, empathy and compassion. We focused on the wellbeing of staff at this inspection as we had previously identified that junior staff did not feel supported. We found that the level of support that staff felt they had depended upon their immediate line manager and if this person was available. Support from the psychology team was limited for the junior midwifery staff.

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 did not look at Kindness, compassion and dignity during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Treating people as individuals during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Independence, choice and control during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Responding to people’s immediate needs during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

During this inspection we only assessed limited aspects of this quality statement please see the previous report for a full assessment of the quality statement. The rating is based on our previous assessments.

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. During our inspection we heard that staff in the area supported one another. They felt that they did not see the senior midwives or the director of midwifery. Some staff stated that the senior team spent most of their time at the other site as they had offices there. We were told that there was a ward managers “mop up Monday” when the senior team would let them know which site they were at during the week. However, where a ward manager was available staff said that this person provided good support.

The trust initiated a staff support psychology service in June 2025. This ran between Monday and Friday. Staff could contact the team via email. When we spoke to a member of the team, they stated that they offered 121 support, supervision for the professional midwifery advocates, reflective practice sessions, coffee clubs and compassion focused therapies. The psychology service felt that they supported the whole system. Despite being told that the psychologist came to site three times a week, no one we spoke to had accessed these services. An initial evaluation of this service demonstrated that there was a desire to improve the wellbeing of staff. There was acknowledgement that this impacted upon the care given. However, competing pressures and a disconnection across staffing grades left staff feeling overwhelmed. This interim evaluation report highlighted the key issues we found and included the impact of external scrutiny on staff at all levels. The report stated that were plans to engage with frontline staff to moderate the support offer. However, we did not find that this had commenced for the staff we spoke with.