NHS hospitals in Wiltshire had a mixed set of results in ensuring staff have the specialist skills to care for children.

The health watchdog the Healthcare Commission has today published a report after it reviewed the progress made by 154 acute hospital trusts in the country since 2005/6.

For managing pain in emergency care settings the Royal United Hospital in Bath, the Great Western Hospital in Swindon and Salisbury District Hospital were judged consistently high performing for having enough nurses trained to assess children's pain.

Salisbury and GWH were consistently high performing for having nurses in emergency care trained to adminster pain relief while there had been a deterioration at the RUH.

Salisbury and the RUH were judged consistently low performing for the percentage of nurses in emergency care who received basic training while GWH had improved.

Both GWH and Salisbury were consistently high performing for the percentage of nurses in emergency care with advanced training but the situation had deteriorated at the RUH.

All three hospitals were consistently low performing for the percentage of surgeons who received basic paediatric training and anaesthetists with advanced training.

All were judged consistently low performing for maintaining the skills of surgeons and anawsthetists and for having at least one children's nurse in each outpatient department.

The results at our local hospitals were in line with the national picture.

The commission said the findings do raise questions about the safety of services that trusts should investigate. However, they do not in themselves provide sufficient information to say whether a particular service is unsafe.

The results can be found at the commission's web site via the link on the right.