THE NORTH West Ambulance Service has been ordered to improve by healthcare regulators.

NWAS has been rated as requiring improvement by the Care Quality Commission following an unannounced inspection, which took place in May and June last year.

Inspectors found that improvements were needed in the safety and leadership of the ambulance service, expressing particular concern over a staff vacancy rate of 5.7 per cent.

The chief inspector of hospitals professor Mike Richards queried whether ‘the service had enough staff to meet the needs of patients’.

Concerns were also raised over safeguarding and staff training at the trust.

Professor Richards added: “Inspectors found a number of improvements were need at North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

“At the time of our visit the trust had been experiencing challenges around the recruitment of staff but it had recognised this and was taking action with regard to it.

“It is vital that a busy service like NWAS has sufficient numbers of staff with the requisite knowledge and skills to meet patients’ needs and we will be monitoring the trust’s progress in securing additional staff as a matter of priority.

“The trust is working against a backdrop of increased pressure on all of its services and, while I am anxious to see the trust continue to monitor and improve staffing levels and share lessons learned from incidents and complaints, I’m confident that the areas of good practice can be maintained and further improvements made.

“Following our inspection we gave feedback to the trust leadership about where improvements were needed.

“The trust board knows what it needs to do to ensure those improvements are made and we will continue to monitor the trust and check on its progress – this will include further inspections.”

Improvements were ordered in procedures relating to patients with mental health, the management of complaints, reporting adverse incidents and safeguarding issues and ensuring that equipment used in patients care is subject to the required checks.

But areas of outstanding practice were also identified, including the use of new technology to map defibrillator locations and sharing that information with control centres in order to help patients in the community.

NWAS chief executive Derek Cartwright said: “As an organisation which has patients at the heart of all we do I was extremely pleased to hear that the CQC believes our staff to be caring and compassionate and that we regard safety and quality as a priority.

“Our staff work hard every day to do the very best they can for patients, from saving lives to offering comfort to relatives, and they should be very proud that this has been recognised.

“We accept the comments in the report relating to improvements required for procedures, guidelines and training – however the inspection took place almost 10 months ago and the majority of the points highlighted have already been addressed.

“For the remainder we are working to a robust action plan which is being monitored by the executive team and our commissioners.

“The last 12 months have been extremely challenging for the organisation with unprecedented demand for our services and it is unfortunate that by not reviewing policies and guidelines as often as we should we are in the position we are now.

“We are determined to right this as soon as possible and ensure that staff are given adequate time to complete their mandatory training.

“This will be a team effort across the whole of the organisation and I am confident that the CQC will see huge improvements when they next visit.”

Jeff Gorman, UNISON branch secretary for the North West Ambulance Serivce, said that many experienced paramedics had left the trust due to stress and low pay.

He added: "There are too few staff to deal with the growing number of 999 calls coming in but that's a problem across the whole of the country, not just the north west.

"The pressures of the job are never-ending, having to respond to emergency calls one after the other without a break.

"It's no wonder many experienced ambulance staff have left for better paid, less stressful jobs.

"Managers at the service are trying their best to fill staffing gaps but without a proper injection of NHS funding from the government and a review of how paramedics are trained this will be an uphill battle.

"There simply aren't enough new recruits coming through the system."