The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published the results of the National Maternity Survey for 2022.
The aim of the survey is to find out what people think about their experiences of antenatal care, childbirth and postnatal care. It is part of CQC’s national patient survey programme to improve experiences of maternity care.
A total of 211 people who received care in the maternity services at NUH responded to the survey which was carried out from April 2022-August 2022. The survey showed that for 49 of the questions, the results were about the same as other Trusts.
The survey showed that the service scored:
- 9.2/10 for women and families feeling they were treated with respect and dignity during the antenatal, labour and birth period
- 9.3/10 for women and families feeling that they were spoken to in a way they could understand during the antenatal, labour and birth period
- 9.3/10 for women and families saying they felt their partner or someone else close to them was involved in their care during labour and birth, as much as they wanted to be
- 9.5/10 for women and families who said they were asked if a midwife or health visitor asked about their mental health.
The results for the maternity service at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) also show the service scored better than most Trusts when women and families were asked if they felt involved in the decision to be induced.
However, the results identified that the service scored worse than most other trusts when people were asked if they felt that staff gave them active support and encouragement about feeding their baby.
Sharon Wallis, Director of Midwifery at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust said: “As a team, the service continues to work hard together to make improvements to our services and these results and feedback are important in helping us to shape our maternity services going forward for our communities.
“We have already been analysing the results and using them to help us to continue to make positive changes. We are not only looking at the areas of concern but also looking at the aspects where we can build on, to ensure the service is the best it can be.
“One of the areas we have been looking is how we improve our infant feeding support and in September 2022, we expanded our infant feeding team so that we now have support workers at the QMC and City Hospital who have a focus on supporting with feeding in the early days. We are continuing to look at this area to see how else we can improve the support.”
The full results of the National Maternity Survey are here: Maternity survey 2022 – Care Quality Commission (cqc.org.uk)
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