Our improvement journey

Delivering high-quality, safe care

We are proud to launch this dedicated space to keep our staff, service users, families, and partners informed and involved in all the ongoing improvement work across our maternity and neonatal services.

New maternity triage system

We have a new maternity triage system called BSOTS (Birmingham Symptom Specific Obstetric Triage) at Musgrove Park and Yeovil Hospital with one telephone number across Somerset.

This new triage system helps us to clinically prioritise the safety of those in our care.

Somerset triage telephone number 01823 343985

You can call our triage number 24 hours a day 7 days a week. When you call, a midwife will ask you some questions about your symptoms and how you are feeling, they will give you advice and tell you if you need to come into the hospital to be seen.

If you are asked to come in, when you arrive you will be assessed within 15 minutes and those with the most urgent symptoms will be seen first.

After your assessment you will be given a colour and an expected time you may wait to be seen again.

• Red – you will be transferred to labour ward and seen immediately.
• Orange – you will wait in the assessment room and be seen within 15 minutes.
• Yellow – you return to the waiting room and will be seen within 1 hour.
• Green – you will return to the waiting room and be seen within 4 hours.

During your triage visit you can ask any questions and tell us what matters to you. It is important to us that you feel listened to and understand what is happening.

If you have any concerns about you or your baby, including changes in your baby’s movements, please call our maternity triage telephone number, please don’t wait, we would rather speak to you or see you in the hospital, than wait until something serious happens to you or your baby.

The BSOTS triage system is used across many maternity units in England and it has shown to improve safety and the experience of care during a triage visit, which is why we chose to implement the approach in Somerset and so far we have seen good results.

What have we improved behind the scenes:

A new governance structure

We have reviewed and re-designed our whole governance structure. This means that we have made lots of changes that allow us to monitor the quality and safety of care, and escalate any concerns or challenges we face right the way up to our trust board though a series of meetings, reports and working groups. We are continuously monitoring the impact of this and will continue to make changes to ensure that we have systems and processes right as we progress through our improvement journey.

So far, these changes have meant that we have made great improvements in:

• Guideline compliance – this means that we have a robust system in place to develop, assess and publish clinical guidelines that ensures we are in line with national guidance and support our clinical teams to deliver the highest quality care.
• Audit compliance – this means that we now have a system that supports our staff to participate in a robust clinical audit programme that brings with it continuous learning and sharing of findings. We hold monthly Somerset maternity and neonatal audit and learning days for all clinical colleagues to get involved and share learning.
• Leadership – we now have dedicated clinical leaders for Governance, Audit, Foetal Monitoring, Pre-Term Birth and Training

Improved team training and appraisal process

With a newly established training team that work across Somerset NHS Foundation Trust maternity and neonatal services, we have developed a programme that supports our colleagues to attend mandatory training and have made changes to the training programme to ensure that it is high quality and supports continual learning in a safe environment. Our training compliance is now much improved with most staff groups achieving 90% compliance in key mandatory training programmes.

Maternity Safety Support Programme (MSSP) diagnostic review

We welcomed the National Maternity Safety Support Program (MSSP) to our trust in November 2024 to undertake a “diagnostic” review of our services, since then we have joined the National Maternity Safety Support Program and are working closely with dedicated midwifery and obstetric advisors who are helping us to shape and deliver our improvements.

Recruited more colleagues

We have invested more than £1.2 million in additional staffing across maternity services in the past 18 months and have welcomed many new colleagues into our midwifery, maternity support, obstetric, theatres and anaesthetic teams.

Improving team culture

We’re making sure we have a strong and supportive team culture, where everyone feels valued and empowered, underpinned by our wider trust values – Respect, Teamwork and Kindness. We have increased staff engagement sessions, increased our Professional Midwifery Advocate (PMA) support, successfully recruited a retention lead midwife who works to support all staff with a focus on staff wellbeing and are engaging with our executive and non-executive safety champions who work to drive improvements in safety across our services.

Improving our buildings

We have invested in making improvements to our maternity buildings, addressing issues of uneven flooring, leaking roofs and water supply. We have installed new fire doors across our maternity buildings in both Yeovil and Musgrove Park Hospital sites, made improvements to security and signage, and installed air conditioning in our oldest ward spaces to help with temperature control.

We know that our buildings need urgent replacement in Musgrove Park however we have worked hard to make the necessary improvements to them in the meantime.

How we use your feedback

Your feedback and experiences can really make a difference, helping us to shape and improve maternity and neonatal care in Somerset.

We want to listen to you and your feedback so that we can celebrate the things that have gone well and ensure we are consistent, and learn from the things that can be improved.

Feedback from you, your family and our community is so important to help us improve.