13 April 2017
You may be aware of media interest in our Maternity service following some tragic deaths of babies in which failings in care have been identified.
Simon Wright, Chief Executive of The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, has issued the following statement:
“The death of a baby is the most tragic event imaginable and we again apologise unreservedly to the families involved.
“In recent years independent external reviews have repeatedly shown the Trust is progressing and learning lessons but we must strive to do more.
“All our staff want our care to be the safest and kindest it can be. Since I joined the Trust in late 2015 I’ve seen how our hospitals have been working hard to promote a culture of learning not blame.
“We are candid and open about any failing in order that we might spare the families further heartache, or the need for challenge to get to the truth.
“Working with our patients, we have already taken a number of steps to make improvements. Our midwives are supported to have special training in fetal heart rate monitoring. That means they can use a ‘fresh eyes’ approach – which has been shown to reduce the chance of the tracing being misread by using additional reviewers without disturbing the mum in labour.
“We’ve also trained our staff to improve fetal heart rate analysis and we have purchased specific monitoring machines which use specially developed software to help doctors and midwives monitor more effectively.
“We are also following nationally recognised initiatives for improvements in fetal heart monitoring.
“The Care Quality Commission (CQC), Healthwatch and independent experts have all described our service as good.
“We are not complacent and discuss our learning in women and children’s services at every Board meeting.
“We have also invited the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives in to review our learning and to revisit us to provide further independent assurance of our progress and to help us continue to improve.”
You can find out more about learning and improvement in our Maternity service here: https://www.sath.nhs.uk/news/continuing-improve-maternity-services-shropshire/