Peterborough psychiatric services praised in official report

The psychiatry service at Peterborough City Hospital has been praised in a report following a CQC inspection.

The inspection looked at the Peterborough service as well as the psychiatric intensive care unit at Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge – which are both run by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

While there was criticism of the Cambridge unit, inspectors said the liaison psychiatry service at Peterborough City Hospital was generally providing high standards of care and treatment to people.

The liaison psychiatry service at Peterborough has two arms, the team who assess people with mental health concerns arriving at the urgent and emergency care department and the team who cover the Peterborough City hospital inpatients.

In their report, the inspectors said: “The liaison psychiatry team were easy to access. Staff assessed patients promptly. Those who required urgent care were taken onto the caseload of the liaison psychiatry team immediately. Staff and managers managed the caseloads

of the liaison psychiatry team well. The services did not exclude patients who would have benefitted from care.

“The number of patients on the caseload of the liaison psychiatry service and of individual members of staff, was not too high to prevent staff from giving each patient the time they needed.

"Staff followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.

“Staff working for the liaison psychiatry service assessed patients and developed holistic, care plans in collaboration with families and carers.”

However, issues around staff training were raised, and there was also inconsistent assessment and recording of patient risk.

A number of concerns were raised about the Cambridge site.

Inspectors found that staff could not observe patients in all parts of the ward, recording of patient observations were poor, records of incidents were missing, and parts of the physical environment were unclean. As a result, CQC issued the trust a warning notice.

Craig Howarth, CQC head of inspection for mental health and community health services, said: “While both inspections identified some good practice, we had significant concerns about the safety and dignity of patients on the acute ward for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care unit at Fulbourn Hospital.

“Patient observations were poor in this service, which in at least one case led to a patient coming to harm. We also found some areas of the premises were unacceptably dirty, which undermined people’s safety and dignity.

“Behind this was a lack of good leadership to ensure issues were identified and addressed. This includes a failure to consistently develop approaches to support patients who presented challenging behaviour.

“These issues led to us serving the trust a warning notice, so the trust now has a legal obligation make improvements.

“We found the liaison psychiatry service at Peterborough City Hospital was meeting standards people have a right to expect, and people could access it when needed.

“However, work was needed to ensure training targets were met, and better access to a psychology specialist was needed to support patients to have the best possible outcomes.

“We have communicated our inspection findings to the trust, so its leaders know where improvements are needed."

The report is available at https://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RT1