Good Hope Hospital

Ratings - Surgery

• Overall

  Requires improvement

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Requires improvement

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

Good Hope Hospital provides a range of emergency and elective surgery for the local population, both as inpatients and day-case patients. Specialties provided by the hospital includes trauma and orthopaedics, general surgery and gynaecology. There are 5 surgical wards within the hospital, Wards 2, 7, 16, 17 and 29 and also a surgical assessment unit and day surgery unit.

During our onsite assessment, we spoke with 52 staff of all roles and responsibilities, 8 patients and 2 carers. We reviewed 14 patient records including consent forms and WHO checklists.

We found the service did not ensure patients were safe at all times and staff did not always learn from incidents. Patients were not always able to access the service due to the demand for hospital beds for other patients. The service did not always demonstrate effective governance processes.

However, the service had processes to ensure staff worked well together and patients received kind and compassionate care and had their medicines administered in line with policy and legislation.

Along with the warning notice issued for failures in governance, we have issued requests for action plans against a number of regulations. These are:

Regulation 12 (1) (2) (c): Safe care and treatment. The service did not ensure safe care and treatment was provided in a safe way as it was not ensuring the persons providing care or treatment had the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to do so safely. Some staff in wards reported they did not have training to use all items of equipment. Staff in recovery had only received basic life support training yet were caring for vulnerable patients.

Regulation 15 (1) (b): Premises and equipment. The service did not ensure all equipment was secure. Some resuscitation trolleys did not have tamper-evidence mechanisms and items were known to have gone missing. No action had been taken following audit to rectify the issue.

Regulation 18 (1) (a): Staffing. The service must have sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff. Staff must receive such appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal as is necessary to enable them to carry out the duties they are employed to perform. There were insufficient staff in the service to safety provide care and treatment at all times. Not all staff had updated their safeguarding training. There was insufficient evidence to demonstrate what training had been completed in some subjects.

People's experience of this service

We spoke with 8 patients during our onsite assessment. Most patients told us staff cared for them in a kind and considerate way. Patients felt listened to and were not afraid to ask questions. Patients told us they felt safe in the areas where they were cared for, and staff respected their rights to privacy and dignity.

However, some patients told us of the frustrations of having short notice cancellations of their surgery, especially when they had planned for pets to be cared for.