Staff 'fell asleep' on duty at Essex mental health centre
A CQC report after inspections in November and January have found that safety standards at Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust have dropped
Staff fell asleep while on duty at a mental health trust, with some of them doing so while they were meant to be observing patients, inspectors found.
A Care Quality Commission (CQC) report said inspectors identified staff at Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT) "falling asleep when undertaking patients' observations".
It said that on acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units, five patients described staff falling asleep at night.
The trust provided data from June 1 2022 to December 23 2022 with incidents of staff sleeping on duty, and there were 20 incidents during this time, according to the CQC report.
One patient reported a staff member falling asleep while they were supposed to be carrying out an "enhanced observation with the patient kept within line of sight".
During this observation, it was intended that the worker could "engage with, and maintain contact with the patient to ensure their well-being, safety, and safety of others".
The report said the Trust "must ensure that staff do not fall asleep when undertaking patient observations".
They also found patients were not always cared for by staff who knew them and the service well, due to a high usage of agency staff.
People mostly said they felt safe, valued and respected, according to the report, but some people on acute wards said staff on night shifts were uncaring.
The CQC has dropped the rating for EPUT from "good" to "requires improvement" following inspections in November and January.
Rob Assall, CQC's director of operations in London and the east of England, said: "When we inspected the trust, we were very disappointed to find people's safety being affected by many of the same issues we told the trust about at previous inspections.
"This is because leaders weren't always creating a culture of learning across all levels of the organisation, meaning they didn't ensure people's care was continuously improving or that they were learning from events to ensure they didn't happen again.
"We found multiple incidents where staff had fallen asleep or didn't interact with people during observations.
"Yet senior leaders believed observations had improved because their data wasn't always accurate.
"Despite these issues, leaders recognised the need to develop a learning culture and were implementing many programmes to do so."
He said inspectors would continue to monitor the trust.
A spokesperson for Essex Partnership University Trust said: "We're committed to working with CQC and partners to improve the quality of care that we give to our patients and those who use our services.
"While we are naturally disappointed by the overall rating change, as the CQC acknowledged, we're already working on a number of areas to improve services for those who rely on us, so that they receive the compassionate care they deserve.
"In the six months since the CQC inspection significant progress has been around the scale and pace of change across the Trust, working with patients, service users and their families to jointly transform all aspects of care."