Enter and view: Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries

Healthwatch Shropshire undertook an announced/unannounced enter and view visit to the Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries on 25 November 2025.

The whole unit is light and airy, with sufficient space for people manoeuvring wheelchairs. Internal communal areas are however rather bare and uninviting and there appear to be problems in safe storage of possessions and equipment for these long-stay patients, who are frequently far from home with few regular visitors

Patients and the unit have benefited hugely from Horatio’s Garden. 

A significant proportion of staff working on the MCSI have been there a long time and find the work very satisfying. However, there is a recent increase in bank staff to replace those experienced HCAs who have left to start their own nurse training. Bank staff have often had little previous experience of specific aspects of a spinal patient’s care, which are different from the other areas of the hospital. Some of the patients said they did not always have confidence in the care provided by these staff.

Healthwatch found that the senior ward staff were sensitive to the challenges (particularly to staff new to the specialist nature of the work) presented by new spinal injury patients, some of them angry or struggling to cope with such a massive disruption to their lives. A programme of training and support appears to have increased staff confidence in handling aggressive behaviour. 

Healthwatch noted that all beds in the MCSI are occupied, but that many patients who have reached their optimal rehabilitation have to remain in the ward for excessive periods (‘bed blockers’) because of delays caused by inflexible systems and processes in some Local Authority areas. 

As a consequence, these patients waiting for discharge arrangements to be put in place occupy beds needed for new admissions. Every patient Healthwatch spoke to had experienced long periods (several weeks or more) immediately after their injury in their local acute hospital before a bed became available in the MCSI. Two patients in particular had developed severe complications before they came to RJAH because of the lack of experience and knowledge of the specialised care needed by spinal injury patients in these general hospitals, including bed sores and skin deterioration.