Two senior members of staff at an ambulance service that responded to emergencies without enough medicine are leaving or have stepped down from the trust, it has announced.

The North East Ambulance Service, criticised in a damning report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), said its medical director Dr Mathew Beattie left at the end of January, and its director of quality and safety, Sarah Rushbrooke, will move on this month.

The trust said both leaders had put their notices in months ago, long before the CQC report was published, and were taking on new roles elsewhere.

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The CQC had found that there was a lack of sufficient availability of life-saving medicines, discrepancies in the number of medicines, missing medicines and incorrectly tagged medicines bags.

Its report said there had been a “deterioration” of services and rated the North East trust’s emergency and urgent care as “inadequate”.

The overall rating for the service was “requires improvement”.

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Announcing the leadership changes, the ambulance trust said: “Dr Beattie gave notice six months ago that he would be leaving the trust at the end of January to take up a new role.

“We are delighted that Dr Kat Noble joined the Trust on 31 January as replacement medical director.

“Our director of quality and safety, Sarah Rushbrooke, was successfully appointed to a new role in a neighbouring NHS Trust in September 2022 and will be leaving NEAS at the end of February.

“We are delighted that Julia Young, an experienced lead nurse in the NHS, will be joining us at the end of the month.”