The annual results of the NHS Maternity Services Survey Benchmarking report, which was published on 28 November, was conducted between May and August 2024 and saw 289 responses from people using our maternity services.
The survey findings highlighted several areas of positive practice in our hospitals, along with areas where our services could improve. These are summarised below:
Where service users experience is most highly rated:
Antenatal care (start of your pregnancy): Service users offered choice about where to have their baby.
Information from midwife or doctor to help service users decide where to have their baby.
Labour and birth: Feeling that healthcare professionals did everything they could to help manage pain.
Postnatal care (care in the ward after birth): Healthcare professionals doing everything they could to manage service user’s pain.
Care after birth: Being able to get support or advice about feeding baby during evenings, nights or weekends.
Where service user experience could improve:
Antenatal care (during your pregnancy): Service users given information about any warning signs to look out for during pregnancy.
Being asked about mental health by midwives.
Postnatal care (care in the ward after birth): Partner or someone else close to service user was able to stay as much as the service user wanted.
Care after birth: Frequency of seeing or speaking to a midwife.
Being given information about possible changes to mental health.
The report also highlighted positive comments and feedback about how our teams treat patients with respect and dignity and speak in a way that patients can understand.
The report has outlined some key areas where those who responded felt we could improve. These areas for improvement are already part of our maternity improvement plans and we are working hard to address them. For example:
- From 1 October partners are now able to stay overnight.
- We have increased the number of staff working on our postnatal wards as well as our infant feeding support.
- We have launched a new and accessible website for pregnancy and early years Pregnancy | Health for Under 5s.
We are also taking steps to increase our capacity for our birth reflections service alongside working towards offering all women and birthing people a postnatal debrief. The learning is then used to make improvements. Our teams have also been working with Stoneygate Centre for Empathetic Healthcare through training and leadership workshops to support staff and ultimately improve experiences for families accessing care with UHL.
To further support improvements, at the Leicester General Hospital we have recently opened a new day assessment unit and a new maternity theatre, which means planned and emergency caesareans can take place in separate areas. We are also continuing to invest in our workforce through training and recruitment.
Partnership work to streamline perinatal mental health services is also underway with the aim of improving access. In the coming year we will be working to strengthen our community midwifery services through focused recruitment, reviewing our antenatal education offer, and much more.
We recognise there is still work to do and thank everyone for their efforts and support. We will continue to listen to feedback – the feedback of those using our services is important to us and plays a vital part in shaping and improving our services.