Analysis of patient experience of maternity care in Hackney
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Healthwatch Hackney analysed its feedback on maternity services, visited the maternity ward at Homerton Hospital and undertook a focus group with Turkish speaking parents to feed into the North East London Local Maternity and Neonatal System Equity to develop an equality strategy and action plan.
Over the three-year period, they found that most of the issues have remained the same. Each year there were some extremely positive and some extremely negative experiences.
The midwives’ antenatal care at the hospital received generally good feedback. Over the last year, there have been several positive mentions about continuity of care, that is being seen by the same midwife throughout pregnancy. The negative comments were about poor administration, such as appointments cancelled at a short notice and the offhand and rude attitude of some of the reception staff.
A continuing complaint was about women left alone in the hospital while they waited to be induced or when they were in early labour. Comments were about the lack of communication with the staff.
The majority of the comments about labour and birth were very positive. However, others felt unsafe with unhelpful, rude and inexperienced midwives. There were a number of complaints about the post-natal ward up until the autumn of 2021. The grievances were that it was too crowded, the night staff were not attending to new mothers’ questions, and there was little help with breastfeeding. However, from late 2021 there were more positive comments from new mothers who had found the staff supportive.
There were a few comments each year that referred to visits to the GP during pregnancy. Women were surprised that GPs did not have a role to play in ante-natal care and suggested changes to the system.
Mixed feedback was also shared throughout the years from women and their partners who do not have English as their first language. On some occasions, interpreters were available and on others not.
Women who had previous experience of giving birth in another hospital and even in another country rated their last experience at Homerton Hospital as “great”, “supportive” “smooth” “much better”. Despite the services being severely impacted by the pandemic, there were only a few references to the changes that were made in the hospital during this time.