Whiston Hospital

Our overall rating for safe at Whiston Hospital remains good. We looked at urgent and emergency care services at Whiston Hospital and rated safe as requires improvement. During the assessment we identified 4 regulatory breaches relating to the key question for safe, where we told the service it needs to make improvements. We found that the service did not have enough nursing staff and mandatory training compliance in specific subjects was below Trust targets. Audits of compliance with some key processes were below Trust target. The service frequently had delays in ambulance handovers and triage and was at full capacity or over, meaning patients had long waits and were cared for in non-clinical areas. However, leaders had put processes in place to help mitigate the risks of care in non-clinical areas and efforts had been made to ensure that these areas were safe. We found that safety was a priority for everyone, safety incidents and concerns were managed well, and lessons learned. The department was clean and well maintained.