According to the Telegraph:"A leaked report at the weekend revealed that claims for medical negligence related to NHS childbirth stand at a staggering £4.5 billion of which £3.3 billion relates to children who developed cerebral palsy as a result of oxygen starvation at birth.
What makes this even more damning is that a report by researchers at Salford University found that 70 per cent of the incidents they studied in which babies were starved of oxygen at birth were linked to staff shortages.
Later this week. Professor Jason Gardosi director of the Perinatal Institute in Birmingham will present the results of a 10-year study showing that poor training among overworked doctors and midwives leads to 1,000 stillbirths a year. This is a point driven home by Prof Sabaratnam Arulkumaran incoming president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists who says the numbers of consultants and midwives at up to half of Britain's hospitals "aren't adequate" endangering the lives of expectant mothers and babies.
The Royal College of Midwives has been banging the staffing drum for years. In 2005 when I was making The Truth about Childbirth a Channel 4 documentary. I was told that 2,000 extra midwives were needed merely to provide adequate cover while an extra 10,000 were required to provide the sort of proper gold-standard care that new mothers deserve.
Now just under three years later the RCM says that a booming birthrate means that a further 5,000 midwives are urgently needed in the system by 2012 – again that's just to provide adequate care.
But the most alarming statistic of all is that half of the current crop of trained midwives is due to retire in the next decade. Half!
If we are in crisis now try to imagine the maternity meltdown by 2017. The may be putting extra resources into midwifery but huge deficits mean that there is a recruitment freeze in many health trusts and graduates cannot find posts.
As a result the most alarming deficit is in experience. What price can you put on a lifetime's practice and wisdom?
Contrast the above with the 's cheery assurances that all women will have a choice about where to give birth by 2009 – reinforced by new National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommendations that women should have access to a home birth if they want one."
Read the full article. This is my point - the NHS might have had money put in but it has been wasted. People want safe care in childbirth or when they are ill. The NHS is not even getting these basics right.
Rachel hi what's your (medical)view on home births? Thanks and good luck in HW.
Hi Melaniethanks for your best wishes. My views are that patients/ mothers should be able to make a properly informed choice about their childbirth - including home birthing centre hospital site. Each mother needs to be assessed throughout pregnancy for risk and allowed to then make a decision based on this and advice from their clinicians. In the event of a problem in childbirth in a non-obstetric unit or home the midwife needs to alert as soon as possible and there should be systems in place to ensure rapid transfer and management. If you read the confidential enquiries into neonatal and maternal deaths they are usually related to poor communication between the different bits of the system - such as midwives calling for help too late or not a proper system in place for transfer etc or understaffing. The mother needs to be fully informed of local services and then make that choice.
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Related article:
http://racheljoyce.blogspot.com/2007/09/nhs-fatal-lottery-of-childbirth-in.html
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