Nottingham maternity review chair underestimated how ‘deep distrust was’ of hospitals

The chair of a major review into Nottingham hospitals’ maternity services says she underestimated ‘how deep the distrust’ was of the trust which runs them. Donna Ockenden, who is leading the probe following preventable deaths and harm at the maternity units at City Hospital and Queen’s Medical Centre, said the uptake of a letter sent to 1,377 families was “very poor”.

The letters were sent by Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) Trust at the end of November and the end of January to families who had experienced tragedies such as stillbirths and neonatal deaths. However, just 360 have responded so far.

Ms Ockenden said the review would need to do something “radically different” to increase that number. Due to the low uptake, a group of bereaved families have urged NHS England to allow the review to adopt an ‘opt-out’ approach, which would automatically include the cases of all 1,377 families unless they said otherwise.

Families wishing to contact the review can do so by emailing [email protected] or by filling out an online form here

This approach was used in Ms Ockenden’s previous review in Shrewsbury and Telford, which included more than 95 percent of affected families. At a meeting with NUH chair Nick Carver and chief executive Anthony May on Tuesday, May 23, some families said when they received their letter, they felt unable to open them as they were “scarred” by previous NUH correspondence they had received.

Jack Hawkins, who along with wife Sarah lost their baby Harriet after she was stillborn due to errors in care, said switching to an ‘opt-out’ approach would make the review more “powerful”. He said: “There’s a variety of reasons they aren’t able to do that (opt-in), because of how damaged they’ve been and the ways they have been communicated with.

“There are families in our group that have met MPs and all sorts but not opened their letters because letters from NUH in the past have been so appalling and damaging.” So far, 1,266 families have contacted the review team themselves directly and, to date, 674 of these have given consent to join it.