Jersey's maternity department to partner with four UK hospitals

Monday 29 July 2024

Jersey's maternity services are in the process of being paired with a board of four NHS trusts in order to be benchmarked and audited against national guidelines amid ongoing "concerns regarding the culture" in the department.

Cathy Stone, the Nursing and Midwifery Lead on the HCS Change Team, said that the department was building up a relationship with an NHS integrated care board, which brings four trusts and hospitals – Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, and Southampton – under one roof.

This, she explained, would help the local maternity department speak to other specialists regularly and attend their monthly quality assurance meetings.

Pictured: Jersey's maternity department is building up a relationship with an NHS integrated care board – including trusts and hospitals in Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, and Southampton. 

Mrs Stone added that the department now also followed National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines, which provide "evidence-based guidance" for health practitioners across the UK.

Staff are also having "listening events" as well as thrice-daily huddles in an effort to improve relationships between team members, she said.

But an update on the progress of the Maternity Improvement Plan, which was presented to the Health Advisory Board in its meeting last week, said that "there are still concerns regarding the culture" in the department – namely relationships between doctors and midwives, doctors and doctors, and midwives in hospital and midwives in the community.

The Quality, Safety and Improvement Committee agreed that group therapy facilitated by psychologists could be helpful and this will be progressed by the Medical Director, according to the report.

Pictured: "There are still concerns regarding the culture" in the maternity department, according to a recent update on the progress of the Maternity Improvement Plan.

Mrs Stone said that the maternity department now holds "multi-professional huddles" and "listening events", and has an improved governance process.

She explained: "You'll have a group of professionals in a room and you might start off with a question: what are the real challenges today? What's worrying you today? What's maybe kept you awake at night?

"And then from there, with the answers that come from that, you develop your agenda and how you take things forward.

"We're listening to what people are saying."

In a recent Scrutiny hearing, Professor Simon Mackenzie – who came to the island in January 2023 as the clinical lead in a five-person “change team” – said that recent progress in the maternity department was "helped along by the fact that there was going to be this inquest into the death of Amelia Clyde-Smith".

In April, an inquest into the death of baby Amelia – who was just 33 days old when she passed away – found that "failings in the midwifery team" and "neglect" on the labour ward contributed to the tragic outcome.

Pictured: Professor Mackenzie admitted that changes in maternity had been "helped along" by the "public scrutiny" of an upcoming inquest.

Earlier this month, Prof Mackenzie said: "When we arrived, the organisation was not in the position to realistically say it had addressed the issues raised by that case.

"It's terrible to say that the pressure of having to face public scrutiny allowed us to put some force into that, but it required a degree of persistence that was surprising."

In response, Mrs Stone said that "you should do things because it's the right thing to do", and that putting in place "proper governance" was key to ensuring quality services.

"We have to do this each and every day to stop it only being as a result of an incident," she said.

Prof Mackenzie also said that he had concerns that the changes implemented during his time in Jersey would be easily undone now that he has left the island.

He said: "We made some progress in the 15 months that I was in Jersey with clinical governance, but it's largely about putting in place structures.

"My worry is – because Cathy [Stone] and I constantly had to chase things up and find it hadn't been done and chase them again – that now I've left, and whenever she leaves, it will revert."

But Mrs Stone said that 102 of the identified targets to improve maternity had now been completed, and that there was "real evidence" that they had been made "business as usual".