Milton Keynes University Hospital maternity services rated 'good'
The rating follows an inspection 15 months ago (July and August 2024) which was prompted by concerns about poor staffing and the culture within maternity services at MKUH.
MKUH provides the full range of antenatal and postnatal care, and its maternity services team recorded 3,801 deliveries in 2024/25 compared with 3,730 deliveries in 2023/24.
Its team is made up of over 300 midwives, consultants, nurses, nursery nurses, maternity support workers, maternity health care assistants and clerical staff.
What did women and birthing people say about maternity services?
CQC carried out an annual maternity survey, which looked at the experiences of 25,515 women and pregnant people, across 121 NHS trusts, who gave birth in February 2023 (and January 2023 for smaller NHS trusts).
Questionnaires were sent out between April and August 2023; responses were received from 120 people at Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. For each question in the survey people’s responses were converted into scores, where the best possible score was 10 /10. Responses were about the same when compared to other trusts.
For ‘labour and birth’ the patient response was 7.8/10; ‘staff caring for you was 8.0/10 and care in hospital after birth was 7.1/10.
- During the CQC onsite assessment, women, birthing people and any family or carers with them were mostly positive about the staff treating them with warmth and kindness and providing effective care and treatment.
- They said they were seen quickly when they arrived by trained midwifery staff to find out more about why they had attended. There were themes from feedback about timely access to breastfeeding support and not being left alone when worried during labour and birth.
- All women and birthing people said they felt supported to raise concerns and felt staff treated them with compassion and understanding.
- People said they were able to raise concerns and report incidents. The concerns and incident reports were taken seriously, investigated and learning shared with relevant colleagues.
- People or those who represented them were given an apology and an explanation when things went wrong.
You can read more about the CQC assessment of maternity services on the MKUH website.
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Photo by David Veksler on Unsplash
