16.03.16
CQC rates Norfolk and Norwich University FT as ‘requires improvement’
CQC has rated Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as requiring improvement in four out of five areas, including major concerns over lack of staff and never incidents.
The CQC gave the ‘requires improvement’ rating to the trust in the areas of safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership.
It said there were shortages of nursing staff throughout the hospital, and medical vacancies which had a particularly serious impact in critical care and palliative care.
The BMA released a report on Monday saying that doctors need better training in palliative care.
The CQC report said that reporting and correct identification and classification of serious incidents was not robust and there had been four never events in ophthalmology and two in dermatology in the past two years.
The regulator said that security on the children’s ward also needs to be improved to ensure their safety, there was a lack of understanding among staff of patients’ ability to consent to treatment, and ward staff felt pressured to take patients who weren’t suitable to their wards because of pressure on bed capacity.
However, the CQC rated the trust as good for its display of a caring attitude towards patients and praised it for outstanding initiatives including a birth reflections clinic for women who wanted to come to terms with their birth experiences, an excellent Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Service and colour coding in Elsing ward to help patients move around.
The CQC’s recommendations to the trust include that it ensures adequate staffing levels in line with national guidance, that it ensures adequate safety on children’s wards and units to prevent children absconding or unauthorised adults gaining entry, and that it ensures incidents are investigated by trained personnel in a timely way.
UPDATE 4.30pm
Mark Davies, chief executive of the trust, said: "We are on a journey of continuous improvement and since the inspection six months ago, have made enormous strides in the progress we wanted to make, and we accept the overall rating. I would like to personally thank our fantastic staff to whom this report rightly pays tribute.”
He added that the trust were planning improvement measures including increasing capacity by building an Ambulatory Care and Diagnostic Centre, reconfiguring the children’s emergency department and developing services for interventional radiology, cardiac catheter labs and critical care, further recruitment, developing staff training to deal with incident investigation and introducing refinements to patient records.
(Image c. Jeremy Durkin from PA Archive/ Images)