North Middlesex University Hospital Maternity Services

This is a report by Healthwatch Enfield. The project looks at maternity services at North Middlesex University Hospital.

Negative feedback about maternity provision raised concern that services delivered at the hospital were not meeting people's expectations. Alongside dissatisfaction with care, breastfeeding support was also noted as not working well. This feedback might be behind the noted drop in local people using the maternity services and going further afield. The CQC also published a report on the hospital maternity services rating them inadequate.

This project therefore sought to learn more about the care being delivered.

To achieve this, a multi-faceted data collection process was conducted, speaking to 63 women, health professionals and mother and baby care service providers. This included a survey covering key areas such as antenatal care, labour and delivery, pain management, breastfeeding support, mental health services, and language services. In parallel, there was engagement with local communities, attending Stay and Play groups, Rhyme and Bounce sessions, and baby clinics. This allowed for direct conversations with mothers and families about their experiences at North Mid, including both antenatal and postnatal care.

There are recommendations in this report.

• Quality compassion and empathy training for all health professionals.
• Recorded data for all patients noting valuable information e.g. Language preference, health issues, and all advice given to patients.
• Accessible interpreters as and when needed given recorded suggestions from initial appointments.
• All feeding options are to be explored by the mother. Additional breastfeeding support to those who want it. Additional breastfeeding support workers.
• More information and in-depth supervision for first-time mothers.
• More information and in-depth supervision for mothers regarding mental health 
  advice and support.
• Additional support/assistance for mothers after birth who have to be kept in hospital due to c-section.

There are no follow up actions in this report.