24 February 2020

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) has taken immediate action after a number of issues were raised by the Care Quality Commission following unannounced inspections to the Trust’s two Emergency Departments (EDs).

The CQC visited the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) and the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford last week and has written to the Trust to highlight a number of areas where action needs to be taken.

The Trust has responded quickly and put in place a number of plans to address these issues to ensure patients receive the best care possible.

Louise Barnett, Chief Executive at SaTH, said: “We take the feedback from the CQC extremely seriously and we are acting urgently to improve the aspects of the care highlighted by them.

“We strive to give the best care possible to all of our patients, however the findings of the CQC show that we have not done this for all our patients.

“We have made some improvements in our Emergency Departments in recent months, but it is clear that more has to be done to implement change and ensure improvements become embedded and we are committed to doing this.”

Improvements which are being made include:

An additional triage room at RSH to help ensure patients receive effective clinical assessment within 15 minutes of arrival at the ED (this is already in operation at PRH).

Providing additional paediatric triage nurses through the use of agency staff

Matrons at each site to work exclusively in ED and oversee quality and safety, including through spot checks and challenge of actions and behaviours

The introduction of two-hourly ‘comfort rounds’ to ensure patients’ needs are being met

Increasing the number of Health Care Assistants in ED to free up nurses to concentrate on their clinical duties

Daily spot checks by the Tissue Viability and Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Teams

The Patient Experience Team will spend more time in EDs and produce a weekly report on their findings to support further improvements for patients.

Louise said: “Our dedicated colleagues work extremely hard in the face of increasing demand and we will be working with them, as well as our regulators and commissioners, including the CQC, to make further improvements in our EDs for the people we serve.”