In a nationwide survey conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), thousands of parents expressed their views on how their maternal journey went.
The CQC maternity survey was distributed to new parents nationwide who welcomed a baby in February this year. It assessed the experiences of 18,951 women across 120 NHS trusts, with responses gathered from 147 individuals who gave birth at the trust.
The questions looked to find out about peoples’ experiences in the lead up to the birth, labour and birth and then the postnatal care offered after they had delivered their baby.
Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust and South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust (STSFT) were ranked as the top two providers of maternity care across the whole of the NHS in England, with 83% and 82% of positive responses respectively.
Only eight trusts in England were listed in the high performing ‘better than expected’ category.
The CQC survey highlighted that patients who were treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital expressed high levels of satisfaction with the care they received, praising staff’s empathy, communication and support.
At Sunderland Royal Hospital, patients said they felt treated with respect, dignity and kindness and were spoken to in a way they could understand.
Jane Anderson, Director of Midwifery at STSFT, said: “Our community midwives and hospital teams work incredibly hard to make sure people have a good experience with us during such an important time in their lives.
“We know we still have further work to do to achieve excellence in all aspects of our maternity care and this feedback is an important part of helping us to keep learning and improving.”
All eight acute hospital trusts in the region were also consistently highlighted amongst the top five performing maternity services in over 30 trusts across the whole of the North East and Yorkshire area. None of the region’s hospitals featured in the ‘worse than expected’ category.
Ken Bremner MBE, Chair of the North East and North Cumbria Provider Collaborative and Chief Executive at STSFT, said: “All our trusts have scored highly in the feedback received about maternity care, and to have two trusts recognised as the best performing nationally, really is great news.
“On behalf of all NHS providers in the region I would like to thank the thousands of highly committed NHS staff who work across our maternity services. These results are down to you.
“As a region we are committed to providing the very highest quality of safe maternity care and will continue to learn, improve and share best practice across the North East and North Cumbria.”
The full survey results can be seen at www.cqc.org.uk.
