Sandwell Health Campus

On this page

• Overview
• Shared direction and culture
• Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders
• Freedom to speak up
• Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion
• Governance, management and sustainability
• Partnerships and communities
• Learning, improvement and innovation

The service is not performing as well as it should, and we have told the service how it must improve.

This service scored 50 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

Staff understood the direction and plans for the department as the whole department was moving to a new purpose-built hospital imminently. Plans had been shared with staff and they had all been invited to the new hospital as part of their implementation process.

Most staff said the department had a friendly and supportive culture and described learning and development opportunities that were available to them.

The provider mostly shared lessons learned when things went wrong.

There were systems in place to identify when things went wrong. Incidents were investigated and the learning was shared with staff at team meetings. However, some staff said they did not always hear about incidents they had reported.

Staff felt they were encouraged to raise concerns and report incidents through the hospitals online reporting system. Not all staff received feedback from their reported incidents.

Staff received a structured induction on commencing employment. Staff we spoke with had received this induction and spoke highly of the programme.

Mandatory training for all staff was a mixture of face-to-face and online learning with modules such as equality and diversity, information governance, fire training, infection control and manual handling.

The trust used an electronic staff record system which alerted staff via automatic email when their training was due for renewal to remind them to book a session. However, staff could not always access training. Staff told us that while trust development opportunities were good, they struggled to attend training sessions due to staff shortages. Examples were given where staff members were stopped from attending training sessions to backfill shifts. Staff were then struggling to access the training. This meant that staff had not updated their skills and knowledge, which could affect their responses in an emergency or when performing those tasks related to the training.

Managers we spoke with told us that the trust were offering staff the opportunity to attend development sessions on bank shifts. However, none of the staff interviewed were aware of this initiative. The trust had a monthly half day where all elective activity was cancelled to provide clinical teams with protected learning time. These were known as quality improvement half days (QIHD). Each month there was a shared learning topic which all teams had to view and discuss, with some specific questions posed. However, the paediatric sessions were held predominately at the Sandwell Hospital and as such staff working at City Hospital could not always attend.

The trust’s sepsis policy did not guide staff to additional information. This could be accessed via the intranet. However, we found that the policy on the intranet referred staff to the sepsis pathway, sepsis screening tool and sepsis six treatment. We saw information boards detailing how to manage sepsis. Sepsis training was included in the basic life support module including the use of sepsis screening tools and use of sepsis care bundles; care bundles are a group of best evidence-based interventions which when instituted together, gives maximum outcome benefit.

We did not look at Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Well-led.

Staff knew how to contact the freedom to speak up guardian if needed, but not many staff knew who their freedom to speak up guardian was in the trust. Most staff said they would usually speak to their manager or nurse in charge if they had any concerns and there was always someone on duty who they could go to.

We did not see any information during our inspection on freedom to speak up guardian, we saw information on notice boards but no evidence around freedom to speak up guardian.

Although we saw a large volume of information on staff noticeboards, we did not see any information on the freedom to speak up programme.

Staff told us they felt listened to if they had concerns or complaints, and felt seniors sought ways to improve the service.

People could sometimes access the service when they needed. The department was open 24 hours a day all year round. Adults and children were cared for including those seeking treatment for mental ill health. The service worked with other healthcare professionals to provide a timely service for different healthcare needs and serious conditions needing specialist input, although we observed long delays for patients waiting for mental health services.

Governance processes were used to learn, improve and innovate. Information held about patients was secure and protected. There was a range of timely data and information available to understand performance and quality and improvements were made as needed.

There were regular and effective meetings led by a consultant and nurse who were leads for safety, audit, quality and governance. These discussed and addressed key areas of performance, risk, audit, culture and workforce. Minutes showed areas of concern were identified and actions were taken to learn and improve.

We were told that leaders were compassionate, inclusive, effective at all levels and were visible and approachable. They demonstrated a high level of experience, capacity and capability needed to deliver high quality sustainable care. Leaders had a deep understanding of the issues, challenges and priorities in their service and identified the actions that were needed to address them.

We did not look at Partnerships and communities during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Well-led.

There was inclusive recruitment and succession planning for the future. The trust had effective recruitment processes. Staff told us they had opportunities to develop including for future leadership roles.

The trust had recently had an external review. The purpose of this review was to improve quality audits and assurance and helping to reshape the process and inspiring trust ready for its move to the new hospital.