THE safety of patients at some of Oxford’s health centres is being put at risk because of a lack of qualified nursing staff, according to a new report.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which runs a number of community hospitals and mental health services across Oxfordshire and neighbouring counties, has been told by health watchdog Care Quality Commission (CQC) to improve staffing levels following an inspection of its community health and mental health services in March.

Inspectors rated the trust as good overall, however, the safety measure was deemed to require improvement with some services, such as wards for people with learning disabilities and the psychiatric intensive care units deemed to be relying too heavily on agency and bank staff.

Health services across the county are battling a retention and recruitment crisis with trusts struggling to attract key workers due to the high cost of living in the area.

However bosses at Oxford Health, which employs 6,000 people, told the CQC they were undertaking ‘key work’ to find ‘new and innovative’ ways of attracting staff to work at the trust.

The report published on Thursday revealed senior staff on some community health wards had raised concerns to inspectors over the use of a high number of junior staff and agency staff which they feared was ‘impacting on the skill mix’.

While inspectors found an incident which occurred while an agency staff member was on night duty could not be reported as the agency nurse was not able to access the incident reporting system.

The trust runs six community hospitals including Abingdon, Bicester, Didcot, Wallingford, Wantage and Witney, as well as the Warneford Hospital and the Littlemore Mental Health Centre in Oxford.

Trust CEO Stuart Bell CBE said the CQC had given some ‘very positive’ messages about the trust over all with ‘really good reviews’ in four of the five inspection domains (caring, safe, effective, responsive, well-led), however, he admitted there are some areas where the trust needed to do more.

To address staffing issues Oxford Health said it had been improving recruitment, through modern apprenticeships and associate nurse roles to give people of all ages the opportunity to develop skills at any point in their career.

While a partnership with the Oxford School of Nursing and Midwifery, Oxford University Hospitals and Oxford Brookes University, aimed to strengthen training, education and career development, a spokesperson for the trust said.

Oxford Health was also rated requires improvement for safety and good overall following its previous inspection in 2016.

The majority of areas for improvement are things we recognise and have plans in place to address. This includes the establishment of a new Healthcare Improvement Centre, which is using international best practice and practical expertise to foster improvement skills, for all levels of trust staff. The centre has a focus on safety and quality of care.”

“We are very proud of our caring staff and we thank them for their contribution to delivering and improving our services before, during and after the CQC inspection.

“We made a major commitment to improving our services back in 2014 and we value the insights that our own efforts and this recent inspection process have given us.

“All of this helps our learning and we continue to work together to improve our services to benefit the people we serve.”