Whittington Health Fully Implements Ockenden Maternity Actions
30 Dec 2022
We are pleased to confirm that Whittington Health's Maternity Service has successfully implemented all 7 of the immediate and urgent actions set out in The Ockenden Review.
Full story
On the 30 March 2022 the final report regarding the investigation into the care of pregnant women and babies at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust was published. This report found failures in the quality of care, and failures to investigate and report poor care over a period of 20 years. This failure led to the same incidents being repeated. The report highlighted the reasons for this were
- Too few staff
- Lack of ongoing training
- Lack of effective investigation of incidents
- Not listening to women and families
The report highlighted the ways in which maternity services nationally could learn from what happened at Shrewsbury and Telford and Whittington Health NHS Trust would like reassure you that we take this report very seriously.
We are pleased to confirm that Whittington Health has successfully implemented all 7 of the immediate and urgent actions set out in The Ockenden Review.
In her report Donna Ockenden identified seven immediate and essential actions that every maternity service in England must implement at pace in order to prevent a repetition of the problems which she identified at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust. These were:
- Enhanced Safety: Trusts must work collaboratively to ensure serious incidents are investigated thoroughly and Trust Board must have oversight of these.
- Listening to Women and their Families: Maternity Services must ensure women and their families have their voices heard.
- Staff Training and working together: Staff who work together must train together and Multi-Disciplinary Team ward round twice daily.
- Managing complex pregnancy: There must be robust pathways in place for managing women with complex pregnancies
- Risk Assessment throughout pregnancy: Staff must ensure that women undergo risk assessments in pregnancy at each contact.
- Monitoring Fetal Wellbeing: Dedicated leads for Fetal Monitoring who champion best practice in fetal surveillance.
- Informed consent: Women must have access to accurate information to enable informed choice.
After a self assessment against the criteria set by NHS England and Improvement and a further review and assurance visit process we can confirm that Whittington Health is compliant against all of immediate and urgent actions set out in the Ockenden Review.
The safety of people giving birth with us and their babies is our top priority. You can be assured that we have taken time and put considerable effort into ensuring that we have taken all possible learning form the report.
We have a close working relationship with the Whittington Maternity Voices Partnership and value contribution that parents to be and families can bring when reviewing and developing our maternity services. It is important that we listen to all women and put their voice at the centre of our care.
If you have any concerns or questions, please contact our Patient Advice Liaison team or our Maternity voice partnership. We are very happy to answer your questions.