Women give OUH positive feedback in maternity survey
28/01/2020
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The results of the 2019 National Maternity Survey were published on Tuesday 28 January 2020. The survey by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) now takes place annually after first being undertaken in 2007.
A total of 17,151 women responded to the survey nationally. This represented a national response rate of 36.5 percent. The Trust's response rate was significantly higher at 47.8 percent with 246 responses.
Overall the survey results give a very positive view of OUH maternity services. Analysis showed that the average score across all questions was one percentage point higher in 2019 than in 2018.
There was also a 10 percent (or higher) improvement since the previous year in the scores for two questions: one relating to women being offered a choice of giving birth at home, and the second relating to partners being able to stay as much as they wanted them to.
The national results published by the CQC - relating to the labour and birth sections of the survey - showed that the Trust's results were 'about the same' as most other Trusts on all questions except for one where OUH performed 'better'. This question was: Thinking about your care during labour and birth, were you involved in decisions about your care? The Trust did not score worse than most other trusts on any questions.
Ali Cuthbertson, Director of Midwifery at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: "I am very proud of the service that we offer women in Oxfordshire. We have looked in detail at the results of this survey with staff, and it was great to be able to celebrate the positive feedback with them. Clearly there are still areas where we know we need to do more, and we continue to work to improve our postnatal care and also to improve the options for women contacting us when they are in labour."
The survey was carried out by Patient Perspective. Women were eligible for the survey if they had a live birth during February 2019, were aged 16 years or over, and gave birth in a hospital, birth centre, maternity unit or at home.
Of the women surveyed who used the Trust's services, 18 percent had not given birth before, 79 percent had given birth to one or two babies and two percent to three or more babies. 49 percent of births took place in a consultant-led unit, 45 percent in a midwifery-led unit and five percent were at home.
The full national and OUH reports can be found on the CQC website.