Queen's Medical Centre

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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. Teams praised the support of the professional midwifery advocates.

The key question of caring was not assessed on this inspection and the rating is based on our previous assessments.

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 feel supported by the senior team. However, where a ward manager was available staff said that this person provided good support. C29 had not had a manager on site for several months. We were told that the deputy ward managers had not been asked to step up into this role. However, no one we spoke to wanted this leadership role. Due to this the team felt that their issues were not being heard and that they were not supported. An issue had occurred the day prior to our inspection and staff reported that they had had to deal with this alone. Despite reporting this through the incident reporting system senior staff had not provided any contact or support for over five hours. The head of midwifery was unaware of the incident when we asked them about it on inspection. We spoke with the director of midwifery about the incident, and she had provided support for the flow co-ordinator who had supported the ward team in the afternoon. There had been no senior contact with the night staff or the arriving day staff who had dealt with the incident. The junior members of the team were visibly upset about the incident.

The trust initiated a staff support psychology service in June 2025. This ran between Monday and Friday. Staff could contact the team via email. The team 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. However, no one we spoke to had accessed these services. Staff stated that they had not come to the ward areas or tried to understand the challenges faced by frontline staff. An initial evaluation of this service demonstrated that there was a desire to improve the wellbeing of staff as 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 report highlighted the key issues we found and included the impact of external scrutiny on staff at all levels. The interim evaluation 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.