Babies born in London hospital "could leave with wrong mother"

The biggest hospital in Europe has been ordered to improve security on its maternity ward after inspectors found that mothers “might leave the unit with the wrong baby”. Some babies born at the Royal London hospital had no name tags – which could lead to them going home with the wrong families or even being given medication meant for another baby, according to the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Inspectors said there was a “lax” approach to checking babies’ name bands. Even the head of midwifery at the hospital, in Whitechapel, east London, was unaware of a baby abduction policy, the regulator said. Inspectors found there were not enough midwives on the delivery suite to provide safe cover, and midwives said they had been ordered by managers not to raise concerns about low staff numbers.

There was a “mixed” view about how caring staff were: one mother told inspectors she was treated as “childish” because she was upset that her baby had been taken into special care.

Inspectors who visited the hospital in July this year said they also observed some “intracultural issues and some bullying behaviour” between groups of midwives, and between midwives and patients. Doctors and midwives on the postnatal ward referred to patients by their bed numbers rather than by name, according to the CQC.

Last year 4,645 babies were born at the Royal London, which is the largest stand-alone acute hospital in Europe.

The CQC has ordered the Barts health NHS trust, which runs the hospital, to improve security in maternity “urgently” after rating the service inadequate. The trust said it had already taken steps to address baby safety concerns, including the introduction of new baby ID tags. Overall the hospital was rated “requires improvement”.

Some of the other issues highlighted in the report include:

• A two-week backlog of outpatient appointments waiting to be booked and some patients waiting for over a year for follow-up appointments.
  


• The nutrition and hydration needs of patients were met, though in some busy departments this was enabled by patients’ relatives.
  


• Nine “never” events were reported at the hospital between August 2015 and July 2016 – wholly preventable errors. These blunders included a surgeon leaving an object inside a patient after finishing an operation, the extraction of a wrong tooth, “wrong-site implants” and incorrect medication being given to a patient.
  


• During the inspection, some patients in A&E had to wait an hour and 20 minutes for an initial assessment from a medic, though national guidance suggests the majority of people should be assessed by a clinician within 15 minutes.
  


• Some medics had to complete mandatory training in their own time or during their holiday leave.
  

Professor Sir Mike Richards, chief inspector of hospitals at the CQC, said: “We were most concerned about the standard of care around maternity and gynaecology services. Staffing on maternity wards was sometimes inadequately covered. But most worrying of all was the lack of a safe and secure environment for newborn babies. At the time of our inspection we raised this with the Royal London hospital as a matter for their urgent attention.”

A spokeswoman for the trust said: “We acted immediately to improve the security of babies at the Royal London hospital. It’s important to stress that these reports are based on observations from five months ago. Since then we have subjected our processes and procedures to forensic scrutiny.

“As a result, we’ve introduced new baby ID tags, we’ve reviewed our procedure for locking down the hospital, and refreshed our policy. We have recirculated our policy to all staff and now test it every single month. Women should be assured our services are safe and we will review our processes regularly to ensure they remain safe.”

Babies born in London hospital "could leave with wrong mother"