Maternity unit under investigation for baby deaths was often operating without senior doctor

A hospital trust under the spotlight over avoidable baby deaths provided inadequate antenatal care, with inexperienced junior midwives working alone and doctors not always available to assess high risk women, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found.

The latest CQC report on maternity services at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust follows a report last month by the NHS Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch on 24 maternity care investigations at the trust. That report found that the trust was slow to learn lessons from …