- Ambulance service
St John Ambulance - Midlands Region
Report from 19 March 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Emergency and urgent care
Our view of the service
Date of assessment 28 March 2024. St John Ambulance - Midlands Region is a charity that provides secure offices, crew facilities, garaging and cleaning facilities to operate their Urgent and Emergency Care Directorate from. We carried out an assessment in response to whistle blowing concerns being raised about the service. We only visited one base at Union Park as part of our assessment. We found there was a poor culture at the service. However, leaders recognised improvements were needed and an external consultant had been appointed to review the culture. Not all staff were up to date with all their mandatory training; however, compliance rates were mainly above 80%. Leaders had specific training in place relating to their role. There was a Freedom To Speak Up (FTSU) framework in place which linked with St John Ambulance-Midland’s region internal systems. FTSU advocates represented different directorates across the charity. During the on-site assessment visit we did not find any concerns in relation to equipment not being safely secured on vehicles. Staff were aware of their responsibility to ensure that equipment such as oxygen cylinders were secure. Vehicles had regular safety checks, risk assessments were in place and assurance checks took place on vehicles and equipment. Staff had disclosure and barring checks in place, with separate processes in place for volunteers. The service ran classes around equity, diversity and inclusion and there were processes in place for staff to speak up if they had concerns and there was Freedom To Speak Up advocates in place.
People's experience of this service
We were unable to speak to any patients on the day of the assessment due to the nature of the service; however, we reviewed recent complaints and compliments from patients. We found patients commented on ambulance crew going above and beyond to help them and they were positive about the care they received. Leaders told us that due to recent changes in the organisation and the roll out of the patient record from May 2023 some data had been stored in secure folders of people who had since left the organisation. As result, leaders had identified actions to support the development of a new patient survey including reviewing the patient satisfaction survey to ensure it was fit for purpose, ensuring the survey could be completed on paper or electronically, production and publishing of quarterly reports and identifying trends and learning outcomes.