Surgery patients at Salford Royal Hospital have been left vulnerable to “abuse and improper treatment” by ill-equipped and overstretched staff, many of whom lacked dementia awareness training and failed to meet basic hygiene standards, the Care and Quality Commission (CQC) has said.
Surgical services at the Northern Care Alliance managed hospital have been served with a warning notice by the health inspector after it was found that patients were left in pain while bed pans full of urine accumulated in the wards.
Salford Royal Hospital was assessed by the health and social care watchdog in May 2025, with a report published on 13 February outlining that its surgical services “require improvement.”
Now that a warning has been issued, the CQC can legally force the provider to protect people using the service from harm and risk. If conditions do not improve at Salford Royal, the trust could be placed in ‘Special administration’ and its leadership group forced to hand control to an outside body.
The inspection was carried out over worries about the governance and safety processes in the gynaecology, spinal and neurosurgery services, and to re-rate the surgical services following a rating of ‘requires improvement’ from December 2022, the CQC said.
Concerns were raised that staffing levels were unsafe and the service did not always properly manage the risk of life-threatening infections, such as E. coli, breaking out among patients.
Inspectors found that there were significant shortfalls in qualified, skilled and experienced staff and many of those in post were not suitably qualified to meet the needs of service users.
Patients on the wards told the CQC they had witnessed other elderly service users not getting support with tasks such as eating and most of the staff had not been trained to support people with dementia effectively.
“The surgical services reported that only 18.3% of eligible staff had completed dementia awareness training during the past 3 years, indicating significant improvements had not been made since our previous inspection,” the report stated.
“Staff compliance with hand hygiene standards and admission screening processes was consistently below trust standards.”
Meanwhile, patients were left at risk of infection as staff shortages meant patients’ urine could not be properly collected and was left to accumulate.
“On wards B1 and B2 (general surgical wards), we observed used bedpans and bottles stacking up in the bathroom areas. This was an infection prevention and control risk as these could be accidentally spilt or knocked over.”
A focus group carried out by the CQC saw 25 out of 30 staff reveal that they felt “ward staffing was a challenge, and shifts were frequently understaffed.”
“Staff told us staffing shortfalls impacted their ability to complete service user observations and keep care records up to date, and that they could not always respond to call bells promptly to assist people,” the watchdog said.
Northern Care Alliance Trust controls four Greater Manchester hospitals in Salford, Oldham, Bury and Rochdale and serves one million people.
After the alarming findings were published, a spokesperson for the trust highlighted that work to improve the quality of care provided at Salford Royal Hospital had begun and was now “well-established.”
They said staffing has been increased across the surgical wards and highlighted that nine more whole-time nurses had been employed on full-time contracts to work in the department between September and January.
In response to the concerns raised about the number of staff trained to carry out and administer specialist care and treatment, the spokesperson said a ward-based training and education programme has since been implemented.
NCA Chief Nursing Officer, Juliette Cosgrove, added: “We know we haven’t always got things right and still have work to do to improve.
“We have been working closely with the CQC since their inspection in September 2025, alongside NHS England and our partner organisations, to make improvements as quickly and openly as possible.
“Our colleagues are crucial to this process, and we’ve spent time listening and making sure they have the chance to share their views on what we can do to make things better.”
