Would/should there be professional sanctions against this midwife?

[Leakygutter]

She's a friend of mine, although she's only just told me about this aspect of her life.

She's single, but been having an affair with a married man for about 4 years. Three years ago he and his wife had a baby and you guessed it, she delivered their baby.

She wouldn't have known when she went to work that day that his wife would be her patient, but she did know she was pregnant and that a birth at her hospital was imminent. She will have know she was working with the man she was sleeping with while he supported his wife giving birth.

Anyway, it seems this was all secret and they were getting away with it until recently, but wife has now found out and is understandably devastated. A complaint is about to go into the hospital.

FWIW friend really needs the Freedom programme, she's had a string of really awful men, some of whom have beaten her and this one doesn't sound any better, so wife has probably had a lucky escape, but it must feel like an awful violation.

What would the hospital do when faced with a complaint like this? Is it as bad as it sounds or is what goes on in a midwife's personal life completely separate to her work?

the midwife has not physically hurt the woman or the baby.

HCPs have a responsibility to both the physical and mental health of their patients. Plus confidentiality, privacy, dignity.

I assume you don't work in a similar field.

Think that sentence was related to the previous one: “what if nobody else was available? [in that situation] she couldn’t refuse to deliver the baby”

I agree that recusing herself would have been by far the easiest and most straightforward thing to do, and that not doing so was unprofessional and honestly maybe a bit drama-seeking. And now she has some drama. So hopefully she is satisfied.

I used to work on the postnatal ward, but not as a midwife.

One Saturday I turned up for my shift to find my ex's new wife on the patient list.

I spoke to the midwife in charge and told her I thought there might be a conflict of interest with one mother on the ward and I didn't want to cause them discomfort at a happy time.

I was permitted to move to the other postnatal ward for that shift.

She should have says something at the time. She didn't need to disclose the details. Medical staff have baby reasons why they prefer to keep work and personal lives separate. This would have been easily avoided.

Something very similar happened in Liverpool

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/midwife-held-newborn-baby-said-14447945.amp

It’s not just about physical harm. It’s conflict of interest and honesty and integrity are in question., as well as emotional harm. Midwife had a duty to let her supervisor know. She chose not to.

there was a case a few years ago where a midwife did exactly this and if I remember correctly was fired. The code of conduct is drafted for a reason.

I too work in this area. Have investigated judicial conduct and my ex colleague drafted the NMC code and rules.

The midwife has acted in a very unprofessional manner and I think she is likely to lose her job and her professional registration too.
She will know this is likely.
Frankly she deserves it.

I agree.

This happened to a midwife on One Born Every Minute. She lost her job.

It’s professional misconduct which will at the very least result in disciplinary action and possibly the loss of her job and registration .

and I’m sorry but I have zero sympathy for her

It's not that she "delivered the baby".

The mother would have been in various states of undress, including the possibility of full nudity. The midwife-mistress would have seen that plus would have looked at and touched her vulva, possibly feeling in her vagina too. Also a possibility the mistress-midwife saw the mother poo and stitched up any tears caused by the vulval area ripping.

I'm being explicit because it's utterly horrific.

There's barely a more vulnerable period in a woman's life, both psychologically and physically, and to have had such intensive, intimate, invasive care by your husband's mistress could utterly wreck someone's mental health.

That the mistress-midwife has had horrifically abusive relationships is a separate issue. She deserves help to deal with those issues. It's possible they relate to her unwillingness or inability to speak up in the day and recuse herself. However, that doesn't matter either. What matters is that she's not been in a place that's enabled her to be mentally stable/sound enough to put the well-being of the mother above her feelings about her relationship - or her ability to speak to her manager when there's an issue. And means that she's not fit to practice. Or it should.

This

She will probably lose her job at the time when the country has a serious shortage of midwives and midwifery care is in dire straits.

In my opinion she got on with her job, she clearly has no real morals to be sleeping with a married man and to then deliver his wife's baby but...perhaps she couldn't pick and choose and just had to do it.

It's a strange set of events...not sure I entirely believe the whole thing, I mean would you have an affair and deliver the wife's baby knowing he is still sleeping with his wife? Very Strange.

Maybe she stopped sleeping with him when she found out his wife was pregnant? who know's the background to this really.

Personally I wouldn't interfere and wouldn't contact the hospital, they have enough on and are in crisis, some midwife will have to sit back office dealing with this admin complaint rather than delivering babies and provide safe medical care.

Understandably the wife is upset, but I think getting the midwife sacked will provide very little satisfaction in the long run, hopefully she's kicked her cheating husband out.

But the wife was in labour and vulnerable not her midwife who was fucking her husband

If I was the wife and she didn’t get sacked I would go to the paper

It's a serious conflict of interest that should've been raised. The whole point boils down to the fact that a prior relationship of any kind can seriously affect your clinical judgement as you cannot remain impartial.

I was going to say similar. A friend of mine helped deliver one of my children so it is allowed.

It sounds like the wife was happy to let MW deliver her baby until she found out about the affair.

My midwife was my neighbour. If we were at parties at each other's houses and someone asked how we met, I would say, "well she saw me naked". She was there when I was projectile vomiting, crying in pain, in all manner of terrible places physically and emotionally. I trusted her so much.

If it had turned out she fucked my DH, I honestly can't imagine the pain.

Its absolutely revolting and she needs to be struck off. At the end of the day, if our patients can't trust us people will come to serious harm. I worked with a nurse who was struck off and it's an awful process, the worst part was definitely having to assure patients and relatives they were safe with us.

This midwife didn't make a mistake, she made a cruel decision and violated her patient.

Your friend has put her employer at risk of legal action. The wife only needs to say something like her vagina has never been the same since been sutured (for example). She’d now have grounds to believe that your friend has sutured her badly on purpose to scupper the w9mans relationship with her husband.

No way of really proving if the suturing was ok or not because if someone says their vagina is very different/too tight/too loose it’s hard to measure that. So it doesn’t even need to be true and she could get a pay out.