Royal Berkshire Hospital

The Royal Berkshire Hospital is the main hospital site of the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital provides maternity and gynaecological services to the population of West Berkshire. This covers an area from Lambourne in the West to Bracknell in the East. Between April 2014 and April 2015 the trust reported there were 5681 births of which 161 were delivered outside the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

The trust provides an antenatal clinic for expectant mothers and post-natal services including Infant feeding clinic support for new mothers. There is a day assessment unit for antenatal women and some post-natal women requiring investigation and/or monitoring. The delivery suite for women in labour of 11 rooms plus a birthing pool room and still-birth room. There are three wards: Iffley Ward for antenatal and postnatal women, high care obstetrics and transitional care babies, Marsh Ward for postnatal woman and Rushey Midwife led unit with three delivery suites, one with a birthing pool.

The trust provides a range of gynaecology services including inpatient services on Sonning ward which has 23 beds, formally designated for the care of gynaecology, general surgical and acute medical patients (at times of escalation). Five of these are utilised as day case beds. In addition, gynaecological surgery and a range of gynaecological outpatient clinics and treatments including gynaecology emergency clinic, colposcopy clinic, minor operations/implant clinic, pre-operative assessment clinic, post-menopausal bleeding clinic, gynaecology outpatients clinics, pelvic floor / urodynamics and outpatient hysteroscopy clinics, are provided.

We carried out a comprehensive, unannounced inspection of the maternity and gynaecology service to check whether improvements had been made since the last comprehensive inspection in March 2014.