Maternity CQC – Frequently Asked Questions

We would encourage you to speak to your community midwife in the first instance, this may be in your next antenatal appointment. If you’d like to speak to other parents, you can do so via the Dorset Maternity Voices community group on Facebook where key messages and information is shared. Our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) is here for you to discuss any concerns you might have with your current care. You can contact them at https://www.uhd.nhs.uk/about-us/patient-experience/pals. There is also a manager on call for the maternity unit who would be happy to speak with you if you have concerns.

Yes. We would like to provide reassurance to all of our women, birthing people and their families that we are dedicated to providing a safe space and service for you to have your baby at St Mary’s Maternity Unit. We were working on the issues raised at the time of the CQC inspection in November 2022 and have already made improvements to ensure that the concerns raised in the report are addressed and resolved.

We have additional investment in our maternity services, with four new consultant colleagues and six new senior doctors joining the team to enhance our out of hours care and early intervention. We have 173 midwives in post (WTE) with another 26 to join us in the next few months. All of our senior midwifery team are now recruited and have joined. We have over recruited an extra consultant midwife to help our staffing and we have been successful in recruiting many midwives, including experienced midwives. We have also been recruiting internationally-educated midwives. We are one of the first hospitals in the country to have appointed an advanced clinical midwife practitioner. At the start of every shift the senior team reviews staffing for the next 48 hours, and we will always ensure there are enough midwives to look after you.

Yes, we have facilities at St Mary’s to support your choices. The unit is comprised of the Haven Birthing Suite, which is midwifery-led containing four birthing pools, and provides labour and birth care to women with low-risk pregnancies. Our central delivery suite is appropriate for women who have had a high-risk pregnancy in the past, have an existing medical condition, have developed a complication in their pregnancy, or would like to have an epidural in labour.

There is a birthing pool on the central delivery suite, where we can continue to monitor your baby’s heartbeat with either a handheld Doppler device or, where necessary, through continuous monitoring with telemetry (wireless monitoring). We also support the option of home births, although this may not always be possible, and we will discuss this with you.

Yes, you can choose the hospital that you would like to give birth in, and this may not necessarily be the hospital that is closest to where you live. At any point, you are free to change where you would like to have your baby, even if it is very close to your estimated date of delivery. Most hospitals have an online booking system or a form for completion. You can always contact the antenatal clinic of the hospital that you would like to change to and explain the situation. You do not need permission or referral from anyone to change to a new hospital to have your baby. We would encourage you to discuss any concerns with your community midwife in the first instance.

We will ensure you are seen promptly, and since November last year we see over 96% women within 15 minutes. We have midwives and doctors who are trained to support you and are one of the first trusts to have an advanced clinical midwife practitioner dedicated to supporting women at triage.

Our staff have had enhanced training and you can be assured there are clear processes for escalating concerns in an emergency. We have also installed a new and improved call bell system to ensure you receive the help you need, exactly when you need it.

Yes, all staff working in the maternity unit undergo regular mandatory training that is responsive to women’s needs and patient feedback. We have dedicated clinical leads to ensure good staff performance and confidence, and we are also expanding our training to other staff groups. We have strengthened staff testing and training on issues such as call bell failure and emergency evacuation of birthing pools, and regularly provide training on emergency ‘skills and drills’.

We have systems in place to enable more robust recording of staff training compliance, which enables our managers to review any staff training needs.

Yes. The senior clinical team ensure daily checks on our emergency equipment, which is prioritised and regularly carried out. This is robustly monitored through our reporting mechanism to our trust Board. We also have introduced more robust checking during safety walkarounds.

We listen to our patient feedback via complaints, compliments and incident forms as your opinions are really important to us. Regularly monitoring our processes enables us to ensure high quality standards are in place and improvements are made where necessary. We have a dedicated audit midwife and an annual audit plan going forwards. We are also up to date with all outstanding audit reports and have regular meetings between our teams in maternity to present findings, share learnings, and ensure we are always improving.

Feedback from our patients, from Maternity Voices Partnership and from our regulators is important to us to drive development and improvement.

Yes, as a trust we have a robust process in place for all incidents, to involve patients and respond in a timely manner. We are already working with NHS Improvement to review and support our maternity team around how we carry out investigations. Where an issue is identified from an investigation, we review and embed this into our future training for staff.

Yes. We were pleased the CQC noted in their report that our service has an open culture where women, their families and staff could raise concerns without fear, and that our staff felt respected, supported and valued, and focused on the needs of women receiving care.

Following feedback we have made our rooms more welcoming, including installing better lighting. We have also introduced birthrights training across our teams to ensure that everyone can be supported with their choices and human rights during birth.

We want to provide you with the best possible care at this really important moment in your life. Your experience and feedback really does help improve our services and to identify where things already work well. There are a number of ways to give your feedback, including the Friends and Family Test, via Maternity Voices, and through the CQC patient survey. You can also contact our PALS team at any time https://www.uhd.nhs.uk/about-us/patient-experience/pals.