The CQC has published the results of its annual maternity survey, which saw our Trust achieve improved satisfaction levels across 38 of the 49 questions compared with the previous year’s results.

Women were surveyed after giving birth in February 2023, with the results published on Friday 9 February. You can download our report on the website.

We saw improvement in areas related to mental health, including whether women felt they were given enough support with their mental health during their pregnancy.

More women also reported they felt involved in decisions about their labour, and that any concerns raised during the birth were taken seriously.

The biggest area where we saw an improvement was around partners or loved ones being involved and able to stay with women on our Labour ward. This was particularly important as the results of our 2022 survey showed women were unhappy families weren’t able to spend as much time with them due to restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, still in place when women were surveyed in 2021.

Our Chief Nurse Kathryn Halford said:

I am pleased more women are reporting they are happier with our service. It’s also good to see some of our efforts to improve areas where issues have been raised via previous surveys have been successful.

We also know there’s still more to do so we can provide the best possible service. We continue to work closely with our Maternity Voices Partnership to gain direct feedback on how we can keep improving women’s experiences; run recruitment and retention programmes to address national staffing challenges; support our Infant Feeding team to educate staff and improve support for women; and provide specialised support for women where English is not their first language.