Queen's Medical Centre

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 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.

At our last inspection we rated this key question good. At this assessment, the rating remained good. This meant women felt well-supported, cared for, or treated with dignity and respect.

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.

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 to us as “amazing,” “helpful” “professional,” “knowledgeable” and “personable.” Women told us staff introduced themselves to them and asked how they were.

The women and their partners we spoke with during the inspection consistently had nothing but praise for their experience throughout their pregnancy, birth, and postnatal experience. Following feedback, partners were able to stay throughout the inpatient episode, however, we were unsure if this had been fully risk assessed. For example, the service was not assured all women in the 4 bedded bay were comfortable that other women’s male partner was staying given they were only separated by a paper curtain. However, staff had removed visitors from the ward in the early hours of the morning as the policy had been interpreted by a family as visitors additional to the partner were allowed.

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.

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.

Feedback was also gathered through the NHS friends and family test (would you recommend the service to your family and friends?). The feedback for May 2025 was 97% positive and 3% negative. This was further broken down to 87% (n27) very good, 10% (n3) good and 3% (n1) very poor.

There was a birth experience lead midwife who was supported by 3 band 7 midwives making 2 whole time equivalents (WTE). These roles were funded as part of the independent maternity review (IMR). This role supported women as they went through the incident reporting and review process and women who had had cases included within the IMR and were pregnant. The team supported women throughout their pregnancy and attended planned caesarean sections to maintain continuity. The team also supported birth planning and birth reflections, and overall feedback from women was this was a vital service, which improved their experience of birth.

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.

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.

We observed all staff greeting women and their families warmly and introducing themselves.

The service had identified there was an increasing Eritrean community and there was an increase in the incidence of female genital mutilation (FGM). A community FGM clinic was commenced to ensure women had access to services. There were also plans to add another community FGM clinic.

The service had the support of an active, Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) who were encouraged to be part of service development. The MNVP carried out ‘15 steps assessments’ and shared the feedback with the maternity service.

There was a team of midwives whose role was to support teenage and young parents. Young people were referred to the team either due to their age, social care status, police or probation services involvement. There was a strong collaboration with external stakeholders to protect and safeguard young parents and their babies. The team also supported young parents during birth if they were able to provide continuity of care.

Women and their families were provided with information should they wish to make a complaint or compliment about the service. Teams used the 10 at 10 process to share learning and themes from complaints and compliments. These were informal meetings which allowed the team to come together and discuss service developments.

Throughout the inspection we observed individual staff and teams handing over care to each other effectively using a structured situation, background, assessment and recommendation (SBAR) approach.

The service did not always promote the well-being of its staff. It did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

During the inspection we observed the team supporting each other and we continually heard how staff were mindful of each other and provided a safe space to share their concerns. However, some staff reported experiencing challenging interactions in the hospital and in the wider community and indicated that they would have welcomed additional support from the trust when this occurred. Throughout the service, posters highlighted staff must be treated with kindness. However, every member of staff we spoke with who had been spoken to in this manner had not escalated as they were not assured action would be taken. We reviewed LFPSE reports between October 2024 and May 2025 and found there were no reports of abuse by members of the public or patients against staff.

Several staff shared that they felt unable to say they worked in maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, as they were concerned about potentially negative reactions within their community.Staff repeatedly told us they were proud of the care they provided; however, they did not feel the organisation was supporting them effectively or ‘had their backs’.

We spoke with the executive leadership team following the on-site inspection and were told there were plans to implement psychological support to manage the practical and emotional challenges staff were experiencing. However, we were not advised of the timescale when this would be commenced.

There was a team of professional midwifery advocates (PMA) available Monday to Friday who were also part of the Band 8 on call rota. This team were heavily involved with supporting staff through restorative supervision and compassion circles. They had developed a ‘faces for feelings’ quick response (QR) code which was on the back of each staff member’s identification badge. Staff could scan the QR code and reflect on their shift by using an emoji. If staff used the sad emoji, the PMA would contact that staff member and offer a conversation about their day or shift. We heard from staff they valued this initiative.