Safety issues found at Airedale Hospital's maternity services due to staff shortages

Inspectors have told a hospital its maternity services must improve after inspectors found safety issues caused by staff shortages.

Maternity care at Airedale General Hospital, near Keighley, had previously been rated "good" by the Care Quality Commission.

But following an inspection in December, the watchdog downgraded its rating to "requires improvement" because of issues around safety and leadership.

Carolyn Jenkinson, from the CQC, said: "We found staff were focused on the needs of people in their care, however staffing shortages had impacted on their morale as they felt they couldn’t always give women and people using the service the standard of care they needed."

She added improvements were needed specifically regarding the safety of patients, partly because there was "no clear system in place to prioritise and risk assess people to ensure they were treated in a timely way".

The report found that the service could not provide figures on safeguarding training and that there were gaps in sharing safeguarding information during handovers between different shifts.

It also said that policies and documentation were not always kept up to date.

However, inspectors found that staff worked well together and understood how to protect patients from abuse.

The CQC said it would continue to monitor the service and conduct further inspections in the future.

It comes after the government announced that Airedale Hospital was one of eight hospitals around the country to receive funding to be completely rebuilt due to its use of unsafe concrete.

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