AN OFFICIAL report has labelled a hospital's surgery ward as "inadequate" following concerns of patient safety and staff training.

Royal Sussex County Hospital "must" take action to improve its surgery services, says a healthcare watchdog.

An inspection in September this year by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found a number of areas that need to be addressed.

Inspectors say that a lack of nursing and support staff meant that there were not enough people available to keep patients safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment.

Further to this the report found that the service often did not have enough medical staff with the right qualifications, skills, training and experience to ensure patient safety

Concerns were also raised about the training of staff, with the report saying that they did not have training in key skills and that not all staff were up to date with emergency life support training.

While mandatory training was provided, leaders reportedly did not provide protected time for them to complete it.

Safety incidents were not well managed and staff "did not always" learn lessons from them.

The inspectors found that infection prevention, and control standards and practices "were not consistently applied across some areas".

Issues with the leadership were also found, with inspectors saying that they did not run services well or support staff to develop their skills.

According to the report hospital staff did not feel "respected, supported and valued" and were not always clear about their roles and accountabilities.

The report recognised a number of areas that the hospital did well in, such as staff understanding of safeguarding responsibilities - although not all staff had up-to-date training.

The CGC also outlined the action the hospital "must" take to improve, including the following steps:

  • Staff complete their mandatory training and each module meets their compliance targets.
  • Staff working in theatres have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to keep patients safe.
  • All staff follow the trust’s infection control policy.

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the site, said "urgent action" had been taken following the inspection earlier this year.

Inspectors carried out unannounced visits to three other of the trust's hospitals, and each was found to require improvement.

Chief executive Marianne Griffiths, who is retiring next year, said: “We take the CQC’s findings very seriously. As soon as we received the inspectors’ initial feedback we acted immediately to make urgent improvements to ensure we continue to provide safe care.

“We are doing everything in our power to tackle the underlying issue of staffing numbers. We have recently confirmed funds for 40 new midwives and obstetricians."

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