Published at 11:09, Thursday, 26 April 2012

MONTHLY patient safety walkabouts are now taking place at West Cumberland Hospital and the Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle, following concerns.

Non-executive directors are carrying out the visits and reporting their findings back to the board each month.

The initiative follows concerns from staff and unions about staffing levels on wards and the effectiveness of incident reporting systems.

The latest patient safety walkabout took place last Tuesday at the Carlisle hospital, ahead of the North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust board meeting.

Professor Vicki Bruce told the meeting that they had visited the maternity and paediatric departments and spoken to consultants, junior doctors, nursing staff, midwives, in and out patients and a visitor.

“To summarise, in terms of the perception of the environment in which they work, they thought things were better than they were three years ago.

“In some areas there were concerns about staffing levels, in nursing for example, and some anxiety around things like the nursing review.

“The patients we spoke to seemed very satisfied.”

Prof Bruce added that staff said they had issues with the current computer system used to report incidents of concern.

She asked them to demonstrate it and said she could understand why it’s a problem.

However Judith Cooke disagreed, saying the computer system was a big improvement on the paper-based system that was previously used.

She added that everyone they spoke to understood safety and took it very seriously.

There have now been three such visits across the hospitals and they will continue to be conducted regularly and the findings analysed.

Results of a recent staff survey were also reported at the board meeting.

Directors were told that there were a number of concerns about the results, which saw the hospitals rated among the worst in the country by the staff who work there.

Responses from staff at the hospitals to the national satisfaction survey ranked them in the bottom 20 per cent.

A large proportion said they would not recommend the trust as a place to work or receive treatment, while others raised concerns about the effectiveness of incident reporting.

The trust did score well in some areas, such as the number of staff having to work additional hours and those benefiting from flexible working.

In a report to the board, deputy human resources director Isla Edgar said a high level action plan is now being developed.

She added: “It cannot be denied that the results of this year’s survey are generally negative, and although there has been an action plan in place in recent years this has not been effective as year on year the results have shown no significant improvement.

“Currently an action plan is being developed, which will work on how to change the previous action planning format to make it more effective in making a positive difference to staff.

“It is intended that staff will become involved in formulating this plan by attending team meetings and gaining input to encourage, involve and engage them as much as possible as these are the people who are completing the survey.”

Concerns were raised about the low number of staff appraisals being carried out across the trust, with directors putting pressure on HR staff to reverse this trend.

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