BBC coverage January 2024: FAQs
You may be aware of a BBC report on maternity services here at the Trust. This page provides some background, as well as answers to questions you may have.
Content warning: this page contains sensitive content about baby loss and maternal death
As a service, we are devastated when there is any harm to a mother or baby because we aim to give the best possible care to every family, every day. We are determined to learn and change when things go wrong. As a result of our internal and independent investigations, we have made significant improvements to our maternity services.
When such incidents occur, we are open about these and report them accordingly. We’d like to stress that such cases are very rare when compared to the 6000 births every year that take place in our maternity services. This does not attempt in any way to undermine the impact of the incidents reported in the programme, all of which were fully investigated.
We want to share some information to show you how we are improving services and how we learn from incidents. We have a new maternity leadership team and have increased the number of midwives and doctors into the service to support women and babies, alongside a range of other safety improvements.
The significant changes made have been driven by our staff, working closely with families and communities, to ensure everyone has a voice so that we provide the best and safest care.
Read our media statement and background
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
We have produced some answers to ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ (FAQs), which may help you to understand further.
Q) Are Maternity Services at Gloucestershire Hospitals safe?
We are confident that our maternity services are safe.
Over the last few years, we have made significant changes to our maternity services. These have been driven by our staff, working closely with families and communities, to ensure everyone has a voice, so that we provide the best and safest care.
Q) Is induction of labour safe?
Induction may be offered if you do not go into labour naturally by 41 weeks. Each pregnancy is different and the midwife and maternity team will listen and provide advice and support to ensure labour is safe.
Q) Are there delays in induction?
Safety of all women is considered and priority given to provide 1:1 care for women in established labour. The Maternity Team have introduced ‘induction huddles’ twice a day (a huddle is when the multidisciplinary Team meet to review the pathway for each woman) to ensure safety and raise any concerns.
Q) The BBC have reported the maternal death rate in Gloucestershire is higher than the national average – what does this mean?
The loss of any mother or baby is a tragedy and devastating for their family. All maternal deaths are reported and overseen by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) at the University of Oxford and compiled into an MBRRACE Report.
Most deaths also have further independent investigations to understand what happened and if any lessons can be shared with families and healthcare providers.
Although the BBC have stated the maternal death rate in Gloucestershire is double the national average, the Trust and the independent teams at Oxford University, and Local Maternity and Neonatal System, have all reviewed the data and confirm that the local rate is not statistically significantly different from the UK rate.
Q) Why has Panorama focused on Gloucestershire?
The programme explores the national and local challenge in recruitment and staffing and also includes three very tragic maternal and neonatal deaths in our hospitals.
It also focuses on the impact on staff experience, where some staff felt unable to speak up about safety concerns or felt that they weren’t being listened to.
The very tragic cases included in the documentary took place between 2019 to 2021 and each one was independently investigated by an external body called the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch - a body established specifically to offer an independent investigation when deaths occur in maternity.
Q) How has the Maternity service improved?
Our Maternity Services continue to go through a transformation process and as a Trust we are determined to learn and change when things go wrong and we have already made significant improvements to our maternity services including:
- New and expanded senior leadership team
- We have increased the number of midwives and doctors into the service to support women and babies
- Worked with staff to focus on patient safety, learning and continuous improvement
- Introduced a new consultant midwife role, strengthening midwifery oversight of Midwifery led care
- Ongoing recruiting and retention programme to reduce vacancies and turnover
- Improved our ‘Place of birth risk assessment’ to prevent delays in accessing urgent care if required
- Three daily safety briefings to review staffing, workload and labour inductions - ensuring concerns are addressed immediately
- Strengthened our internal Freedom to Speak Up service
- Providing a range of support for staff, including wellbeing and psychological services, peer to peer networks, and safety champions.
Since April 2020 we have invested an additional £1.8 million to increase Midwifery staffing and the number of Midwives working in the department has increased from 242.99 (2020) to 263.77 (December 2023).
Q) How is the Trust improving?
Whilst the focus of the programme is on maternity services, how we respond to issues of safety across our hospitals is an important issue for all of our services. Central to this is our work to improve and develop an open and listening culture - a culture that supports staff to speak up and be listened to on issues of patient care and safety.
Support information and additional questions
Getting in touch with our team
If your question is not answered here, you have various options to get in touch with our team, depending on its urgency:
- Speak to your named midwife
- Speak to our Patient Experience Team by calling 0800 019 3282 or emailing: ghn-tr.helplinesupport@nhs.net
- Send us a direct message on Facebook; Instagram or X (formerly Twitter)
Other local support
- Contact Gloucestershire Maternity Voices Partnership
- Contact the Forget-Me-Not support group
National support organisations
If you are affected by the issues raised in the programme and these are not directly related to our maternity care, there is a range of support available at:
Information in different languages
Using an online service to translate our website
You can translate this page using Google Translate which uses software to translate website information into different languages. Be aware that the translation is via computer software, so there may be inaccuracies.
To use:
- Open the page you want to translate, copy the web address.
- Open a new tab and open Google Translate.
- Paste the web address of the article into the box on the left.
- Change the language above the box on the right using the ‘V’ icon and the article should be translated.
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