Hospital must keep improving, says health watchdog

A YORKSHIRE hospital must ensure there is enough suitable staff to meet the needs of the patients during shifts as part of further improvements to the service demanded by a watchdog.

The Chief Inspector of Hospitals has told Airedale NHS Foundation Trust that it must continue to make improvements to patient safety and management oversight at Airedale General Hospital, it was revealed today.

Care Quality Commission inspectors visited the trust between March 28 and 30 to check whether the it had improved since the last comprehensive inspection a year before. The trust was rated as “requires improvement” for being safe and well-led, a verdict which is still in place.

As part of improvements the trust must review “the process of identifying, recording and reporting mixed sex accommodation occurrences and breaches in critical care”. All staff at the hospital, near Keighley, must also complete mandatory training.

Since the last inspection the CQC found that the trust had made progress and taken action to address some of the issues, particularly within critical care.

Staff reported a better organisational culture since the previous inspection and there was evidence of a “positive incident reporting culture”, the CQC said.

The Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Ted Baker, said: “We have told the trust that it must ensure that, during each shift; there are enough suitable staff to meet the needs of the patients.

“In addition we found the governance arrangements required further strengthening. We were not assured from some of the recently reported safety and safeguarding incidents that the systems and processes to learn from the incidents were fully effective.”

Bridget Fletcher, Chief Executive of Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The report usefully highlighted some areas for improvement and we have plans in place to tackle them. Nurse staffing and recruitment, in particular, remains a national challenge, but we continue to focus on planning our future workforce, and have over the last year adopted new nursing roles such as nurse associates and apprentice healthcare support workers.”