Following a Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection of Bradford Teaching Hospitals’ Maternity services in January, the CQC has found improvements in our Maternity services and the care we provide to women and their babies.
This means that Bradford Royal Infirmary’s overall rating has improved from requires improvement to good – which is tremendous news and reflects the hard work, dedication and compassion of our staff.
The Trust also made significant improvements in the well-led standard for Maternity services – moving from inadequate to good.
Chief Nurse at the Trust, Karen Dawber, said:
I’m particularly proud that our leadership approach developed through our Outstanding Maternity Services initiative has been recognised as outstanding practice.
Even though our overall rating for Maternity services remains the same, as not all standards were looked at by the CQC on this visit, it has recognised all of the positive improvements we have made: our new purpose-built surgical theatres and our open and honest culture where we are continually learning to make improvements.
At a time when maternity services nationally are under close scrutiny, I’m very proud of the changes we have made and we are absolutely committed to continuing to make improvements to provide the very best care we can to our women and their families.
Inspectors found the following:
- Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills.
- Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of women and people receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities.
- Staff worked well together for the benefit of women and people using the service.
- The service investigated incidents and shared learning with staff.
Carolyn Jenkinson, CQC’s deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare, said:
When we visited maternity services at Bradford Royal Infirmary, we found significant improvements in leadership since our previous inspection. We were pleased to see that leaders were focused on managing priorities the service faced and making changes to benefit women and people in its care.
For example, there were new surgical theatres which had been purpose built and designed to ensure the best possible environment for people using maternity services. Additionally, there was an open culture where people, their families and staff felt they could raise concerns without fear.
The full report has published on the CQC’s website today.