Hospital midwives at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford have been told to work double shifts with no sleep, leaving them awake for more than 24 hours, according to a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report. The report into Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust found that managers redeployed community staff to fill hospital shifts overnight during busy periods, resulting in extended periods without rest.
Staff told inspectors that this impacted their wellbeing and patient safety, with evidence showing that fatigue can cause mistakes leading to harm. The CQC also found that the hospital failed to triage pregnant women on time and did not properly report delays to induction of labour as incidents.
Despite these issues, the overall maternity unit at the trust, including the Horton General Hospital, was rated as “good”, up from “requires improvement”. However, the safety of maternity services at the John Radcliffe was rated as “requires improvement”.
Amanda Williams, CQC deputy director, said: “When we inspected maternity services at both John Radcliffe and Horton General hospitals, it was encouraging to see that some improvements had been made. We found services being delivered by caring and supportive staff who treated women as individuals, involving them in decisions about their care. John Radcliffe was a busy unit operating under significant pressure, and systems to keep women and their babies safe didn't always work consistently well under that pressure.”
The trust said it would end such gruelling shift patterns and ensure that if a shift occurs after midnight, the midwife is entitled to a compensatory rest period the following day. Simon Crowther, interim chief executive officer, said: “We take these findings very seriously and we have already begun work to address them. It is important that we tackle these areas with urgency and embed the changes needed to build on the progress which has been made.”
