Updated
21 February 2024
Pages 1 and 2 of this report relate to the hospital and the ratings of that location, from page 3 the ratings and information relate to maternity services based at Torbay Hospital.
We inspected the maternity service at Torbay Hospital as part of our national maternity inspection programme. The programme aims to give an up-to-date view of hospital maternity care across the country and help us understand what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.
Torbay Hospital provides maternity services to the population of Torquay and South Devon.
Maternity services include antenatal clinics and a day assessment unit, a consultant led delivery suite and a mixed antenatal and postnatal ward (John Macpherson ward).
We will publish a report of our overall findings when we have completed the national inspection programme.
We carried out a short notice announced focused inspection of the maternity service, looking only at the safe and well-led key questions.
Our rating of this hospital stayed the same. We rated it as Requires Improvement because:
- Our rating of Requires Improvement for maternity services did not change ratings for the hospital overall. We rated safe as Requires Improvement and well-led as Requires Improvement.
How we carried out the inspection
We provided the service with 2 working days’ notice of our inspection.
We visited the day assessment, antenatal clinics, delivery suite, obstetric theatres, and the antenatal and postnatal ward.
We spoke with 9 midwives and 6 women and birthing people. We received 5 responses to our give feedback on care posters which were in place during the inspection.
We reviewed 3 patient care records, 3 Observation and escalation charts and 3 medicines records.
Following our onsite inspection, we spoke with senior leaders within the service; we also looked at a wide range of documents including standard operating procedures, guidelines, meeting minutes, risk assessments, recent reported incidents as well as audits and action plans. We then used this information to form our judgements.
You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.
Medical care (including older people’s care)
Updated
3 November 2023
Updated
7 June 2016
We have judged the overall critical care service to be good. The safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership of the service were all good. Caring was outstanding.
- Patients were kept safe from avoidable harm. Staff worked in an open and honest culture that encouraged incident reporting and learning. Generally good levels of nursing, medical and allied healthcare professional staffing ensured patients received care care. Staff adhered to infection prevention and control policies and protocols.
- Treatment by staff was delivered in accordance with best practice and recognised national guidelines. There was a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to assessing and planning care and treatment. Patients’ needs were comprehensively assessed and outcomes were recorded and monitored. Staff were skilled, experienced and worked as part of an effective multidisciplinary team.
- Patients were truly respected and valued as individuals. Feedback from people who had used the service, including patients and their families, had been overwhelmingly positive. Staff went above and beyond their usual duties to ensure patients experienced compassionate care and that care promoted dignity. Innovative support for patients was encouraged and valued by staff, patients and visitors.
- The critical care service responded well to patients’ needs. Patients were treated as individuals, and there were strong link nurse roles for all aspects of patient need. There were few complaints about the department, but where a complaint was received it was dealt with in a timely and compassionate way.
- There was a clear vision and strategy, with staff being actively involved in the development and delivery. Staff, patients and their families were actively engaged with to identify areas of good practice, as well as areas that could be improved. There was a high level of staff satisfaction in a supportive, open ‘no-blame’ culture. The leadership drove improvement and staff were accountable for delivering change. Innovation and improvement were celebrated and encouraged.
However:
- The unit did not meet current standards for a modern critical care unit and had been recognised by the trust as not being fit for purpose. However, staff worked well within the environment to keep patients safe from avoidable harm and the building of a brand new unit had started.
- Staff had alimited understanding of the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS).We could not be assured that patients who required an authorisation under DoLS were having this requested by the unit.
- Bed pressures in the rest of the hospital affected timely discharges from the unit, but the numbers of these were below (better than) the NHS national average. Elective (planned) surgery was impacted on by bed availability in critical care. There were limited facilities for visitors and the unit did not meet the modern critical care building standards. However, a new critical care unit was being built and once opened would provide much improved facilities.
- Governance arrangements required some improvement. In particular a holistic formal review of safety information on a more regular basis was needed, as was the regular review of mortality.
Updated
17 May 2018
Staff providing end of life care included ward nurses and doctors, the chaplaincy, ward housekeepers, porters, administrative staff and allied health professionals. End of life care was also provided by a hospital specialist palliative care team and cancer nurse specialists for patients needing difficult symptom management. A palliative care service was provided by the trust to support the management of pain and other symptoms and provide psychological, social and spiritual support. The objective of the palliative care service was to achieve the best quality of life for patients and their families. Support was provided to help patients live as normal routine as possible until death and to offer support to help the family cope during the patient’s illness and in their own bereavement.
Our rating of this service improved. We rated it as good because:
- End of life care at Torbay hospital had become a more integrated service which had seen significant improvement of the care provided to its patients nearing their end of life.
- Since our previous inspection a more comprehensive audit programme had been undertaken and from the results we could see where change had been made leading to improvements.
However:
- There were still areas that remained an issue, such as the recording and sharing of spiritual needs and the lack of care planning. The trust had identified these as areas needing to improve, however actions taken so far had not been sufficient to address them.