Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSCQC urges action on basic nursing skills and cleanliness lapses at Essex trust
A damning report on the state of care at Basildon and Thurrock hospital has prompted the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to seek urgent remedial action.
After inspectors revealed unusually high death rates and a catalogue of serious deficiencies, including a lack of basic nursing skills with failure to feed patients or give medication correctly, they asked trusts regulator Monitor to intervene.
Its executive chairman, Dr William Moyes, has said it is using its powers to demand immediate action to ensure “the delivery of rapid improvement of services”.
Improvements in patient care have been “too slow to date”, he said, and Monitor is concerned about the effectiveness of the trust’s board.
He said: “We will be reviewing the trust’s performance regularly and in detail - if we don’t see measurable results quickly, we’ll take further action.”
CQC chief executive Cynthia Bower said the trust has taken its concerns seriously, but added: “Our confidence in the management’s ability to deliver on commitments and to turn the situation around has been severely dented.”
Trust chief executive Alan Whittle, meanwhile, has said that he is “confident that the actions we, and our cleaning contractor, are taking will return us to compliance by November 30”.
The CQC report reveals that, as well as lack of basic care, inspectors found blood stains on floors and curtains, blood splattered on trays used to carry equipment and badly soiled mattresses in the A&E department.
They also found equipment being used repeatedly that should only be used once, and resuscitation room equipment that was past its use-by date.
Other items included blood pressure cuffs stained with blood, suction machines contaminated with fluid inside and out, and apparent mould on equipment.
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Readers' comments (4)
Anonymous | 27-Nov-2009 3:20 pm
For things to have got this bad it must have been happening for quite sometime.
yes your damm right that immediate action to ensure the delivery of rapid improvement is required,its disgusting!!!!
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Anonymous | 27-Nov-2009 4:37 pm
As was stated above, this must have been going on for a long time to get this bad- so how the hell was it made a Foundation Trust? And what went so badly wrong that a hospital good enough to get Foundation status became this poor?
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Anonymous | 27-Nov-2009 7:12 pm
As some one who actually works at this trust there has been a problem with contract cleaners for some time. Some are better at their jobs than others and the supervisors have been doing ther level best to get employees to do their jobs correctly. However, i do agree that blood stained items being used is disgraceful. However, the staff i have worked with as a student nurse and as a qualified staff nurse have patient care foremost in their minds at all times and some of the comments made in the press are sensationlist to say the list.
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anne whiting | 29-Nov-2009 3:20 am
just shows that the idea of not needing registered nurses and need only staff who can work machines that go ping is really working
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