Weston General Hospital

Updated 1 March 2024

Pages 1 and 2 of this report relate to the hospital and the ratings of that location, from page 3 the ratings and information relate to maternity services based at Weston General Hospital.

We inspected the maternity service at Ashcombe Birth Centre at Weston General Hospital as part of our national maternity inspection programme. The programme aims to give an up-to-date view of hospital maternity care across the country and help us understand what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.

Ashcombe Birth Centre at Weston General Hospital provides maternity services to the population of Weston Super Mare, Clevedon and the surrounding areas in North Somerset.

Maternity services include scanning rooms, outpatient clinics and a midwifery led birthing centre Ashcombe Birth Centre. Between November 2022 and November 2023, 9 babies were born at Ashcombe Birth Centre at Weston General Hospital.

We will publish a report of our overall findings when we have completed the national inspection programme.

We carried out a short notice announced focused inspection of the maternity service, looking only at the safe and well-led key questions.

Weston General Hospital is not currently rated.

Our rating of good for maternity services did not change the hospital rating overall.

We also inspected 1 other maternity service run by University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust. Our report is here:

• UHBW Bristol Main Site – St Michael’s Hospital - https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/RA7C1

How we carried out the inspection

We provided the service with 2 working days’ notice of our inspection.

We visited the outpatient clinics, day assessment unit and birthing rooms.

We spoke with 2 midwives, 2 midwifery support workers and 3 admin staff.

We reviewed 2 patient care records.

Following our onsite inspection, we spoke with senior leaders within the service; we also looked at a wide range of documents including standard operating procedures, guidelines, meeting minutes, risk assessments, recent reported incidents as well as audits and action plans. We then used this information to form our judgements.

You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.

Updated 12 October 2022

Updated 1 March 2024

Updated 4 November 2021

Updated 24 September 2020

University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW) is the newly merged trust comprising what was formerly University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and Weston Area Health NHS Trust, which came together on 1 April 2020.

Bringing together a combined workforce of over 13,000 staff, the new trust delivers over 100 different clinical services across 10 different sites, serving a core population of more than 500,000 people. The organisation provides care to the populations of Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and surrounding areas.

Urgent and emergency care services are provided in Weston General Hospital’s emergency department (ED) seven days a week, 365 days a year. The department is open from 8am until 10pm.

There are two treatment areas in the emergency department. Patients with serious injuries or illness, who mostly arrive by ambulance, are seen and treated in the major treatment area, which has eight cubicles and a resuscitation room. The resuscitation area has four bays, one of which is equipped to treat children. The major treatment area is accessed by a dedicated ambulance entrance. Patients with minor injuries are assessed and treated in the minor treatment area, which has 12 cubicles and a paediatric room. At times of high demand, patients are accommodated in the corridor surrounding the major treatment area. There are designated trolley spaces and temporary curtains are used to provide privacy.

The emergency department is not a designated trauma unit. Severely injured patients are taken by ambulance to trauma centres in Bristol or Taunton.

We inspected the department on 28 July 2020. We spoke with approximately 24 staff, including doctors, nurses, administrative staff and managers. We observed staff handover meetings. We looked at 11 patients’ records and observed patients’ care.