Maternity improvements already making a difference
Changes to the Maternity Unit at Basildon Hospital are already making a positive difference with fewer babies needing to be admitted to neonatal intensive care.
A raft of improvements have been put in place in recent months.
Mandeep Singh, Group Clinical Director for Maternity at Basildon, explained how bringing in new leadership in the maternity unit, along with staff acting swiftly to make changes in clinical pathways, has already had a real impact.
He said: “Our priority is the safety of mums and their babies. The improvements that we’ve made are making a difference to both our patients and staff on the maternity unit.
“First and foremost, we want families to be confident that our maternity unit is safe and that they are getting the best standard of care at Basildon Hospital. This is just the beginning, but these changes are helping us deliver that.”
Other steps taken to improve safety include the installation of a central system to remotely monitor heart rates of babies, over 200 staff working in high risk baby areas have received extra fetal monitoring training - helping them to identify signs of reduced blood flow to the baby - and more consultants available on the labour ward, as well as additional staff to cover all emergency areas.
Since June the maternity unit has also put consultants in charge of managing the planned caesarean section list, meaning that there are far fewer cancellations.
Not that the Unit is going to stop there, as Mandeep explained: “We will be welcoming 23 new midwives who will be joining us in October, and more than £2.5 million is being spent on improving the labour ward, postnatal ward and revamping the triage unit.”