Improving our maternity care
The Independent Maternity Review (known as the Ockenden review) published its final outcomes in March 22.
Requested by the Health Secretary at the time, The Ockenden review first commenced in 2017 and set out to examine 23 cases of concern at the maternity services at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. This later grew to reviewing over 1500 clinical incidents within maternity care at the trust between 2000 and 2019.
The final report covers the findings, conclusions and essential actions needed to improve maternity care across the country.
We have a duty to prevent the failings found at Shrewsbury happening at our Trust.
So what does this mean for us?
Despite the review being focused on a particular Trust, the recommendations and learnings are wide-reaching across all maternity services, and even services beyond maternity.
The key recommendations are largely centred around the following four key pillars:
- Safe staffing levels
- A well-trained workforce
- Learning from incidents
- Listening to families
We have already been implementing the immediate and essential actions from the interim report and are reviewing the new actions recommended in the final report. Following this analysis, we will update our maternity improvement plan to ensure we are applying all of the learning across the Trust. We will provide assurances on the progress of these plans through our Board and local maternity and neonatal system within the regional and national reporting frameworks that are in place.
“Improvements that we are already implementing include working with local maternity partners to ensure we are listening to the voices of our patients, and at the same time securing new funding to improve our services where needed,” said Caroline Alexander, CBE, Group Chief Nursing Officer.