THE new director of nursing at the Royal Bolton Hospital has shown the board she means business as she called for an external review — just weeks into her post.

Trish Armstrong-Child has scheduled an independent review of Bolton NHS Foundation trust’s procedures regarding pressure ulcers.

Mrs Armstrong-Child has also commissioned a report of all falls at the hospital in the past 12 months.

The review is due to take place in the first week of July and the report on falls is expected to be brought to the board the same week.

Mrs Armstrong-Child said she wanted to understand what was going wrong and said often “simple things” can make a big difference.

Her decision to bring in external reviewers comes as figures for March revealed there had been 10 grade two pressure ulcers in the community, six grade two in the hospital and two grade three pressure ulcers — a level she said was “completely unacceptable”.

Three of the category two hospital acquired pressure ulcers were deemed to be “avoidable” as care plans had not been put in place.

Data for falls in April revealed there were four patients who had received moderate or severe harm, including two with a fractured neck and or femur, and two who sustained head injuries.

One of the head injuries was determined to have been a “preventable fall” because measures to reduce the risk of a fall had not been implemented.

Ms Armstrong-Child said she hoped the report into falls would help staff tackle the problem.

Data for pressure ulcers in Bolton has revealed the Trust is actually performing better than Greater Manchester and national levels and is also lower than Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust.

But it has higher levels than the University Hospital of South Manchester and Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, and Mrs Armstrong-Child said there was room to improve.

She has increased the monthly meetings about pressure ulcers to twice weekly meetings and said she wants the review to bring a “fresh pair of eyes” to the problem.

Ms Armstrong-Child added: “My fear at the moment is that there is a lot more that we need to do preemptively.

“I’m very keen to get an external review in to get some clear indications.”