'Long road ahead' until maternity services in Nottingham deemed safe
This months mark 2 years since Donna Ockenden's independent inquiry began.
The chair of Nottingham’s maternity services review says 'there is still a long road ahead' until maternity care in the city is safe for mums and their babies.
Senior midwife Donna Ockenden is leading a team of experienced doctors and midwives from across England to review cases of serious and potentially serious concern at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, which runs Nottingham City Hospital and the Queen’s Medical Centre.
There are now 1,939 families involved, as well as 790 staff members.
It's the largest review of its kind in NHS history.
Speaking to us Ms Ockenden says the Trust is making progress, but that it's a very slow process.
"Some of the themes I'm feeding back to the Trust, I've already fed back to them.
"So very recently, I was sharing with the Trust examples of poor bereavement care across that pregnancy loss and baby death period of time. I've been talking about that, and I've been talking about racism and discrimination and some women being treated better than others since day one of this review."
"It's frustrating, and it's more than just frustrating, it's upsetting for families that they're having to share this information with me. It shouldn't be happening.
"I think then in terms of other processes, families are regularly telling me that their medical records are taking too long to appear, that subject access requests, which are a legal process, are taking far too long. I think that this then compounds the distress that families are feeling.
"I think it can also lead to a distrust in the trust, because even if it is just down to under staffing or poor process, what families will think at the back of their minds is, are they hiding something? Are they not telling me something? Why the delay?
"It's really not fair. Families have been through enough and so I think the Trust has got to do more more quickly to ensure that family requests are met in a timely way."
In a statement on August 15 NUH chief executive Anthony May said: “To date, we have made a number of improvements, but there is still more to do.
“We have restructured the team which deals with these matters, and 14 new colleagues are joining us throughout August and September 2024.
“This will help improve the timeliness of our response although we must balance this against ensuring quality and accuracy. The process for requesting access to health records is also under review. We are committed to simplifying this process as soon as possible.”