To think if 91 midwives from one trust are under Fitness to Practice proceedings there's a problem with the trust

[JulietteHasAGun]

Rather than the individuals? So work load and staffing, procedures, training?

Nobody wants bad/rubbish staff to go unchecked but I struggle to believe that what must be a significant chunk of the staff are that bad? Scapegoat anyone?

It will suit Wes Streeting, etc to throw individuals under the bus rather than admit that the unit hasn't been staffed sufficiently.

There is currently an investigation ongoing (and a concurrent police criminal investigation) - how many investigations do maternity services need where the results talk about staffing levels and still the govt don't fund maternity services better.

The amount of obs and gynae compensation pay outs is over a third of the total obs and gynae budget and increasing massively every year.

Women need to be up in arms. The NMC are in cahoots with the govt and are doing bugger all about it. The RCM union are useless.

I can bet what;s going to happen now - midwives there will go off sick and/or leave. Who is going to staff the unit then? People will be put off training as midwives - why would you when you see this publicity. Interesting it's the female midwives being thrown under the bus....I don't see anything about any doctors being held to account!

I think this could be the end of Midwifery. These investigations are going to spiral and the blame be put in the wrong place. The govt are not going to admit they should have increased funding, the trusts aren't going to admit they should have employed more staff.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council suspends midwife in maternity probe - BBC News

85 open complaints against Nottingham nurses and midwives

When I was nurse training back in the 90s there was a problem with midwifery. We were warned prior to our midwifery placement that it was a strange place and not to take things to heart. Back then, midwives had to be qualified nurses to get onto the midwifery course. I think that gave them a certain understanding of how to deal appropriately with pain, fear and emergency situations. I think there's so much misogyny involved that they're just treating women as a birthing vessel to be processed. I'm sure some individuals are effective and caring, but it doesn't take much to ruin the culture of a unit.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5507628-another-hospital-dehumanises-women-birthing-parents?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Yes and no, I have personally seen midwives acting in a really mean way towards new mums. Nothing to do with time pressure, they were standing there, snarky smile on their face and criticising how they were swaddling their newborn but without giving any guidance. The mum was on the verge of tears and the midwife just stood there staring at her for ages.
This is definitely on the individual, isn’t it?
Same with pain relief, there is a difference between the midwife who tells you with a smile that she will give you some but it might take some time as she has other tasks to do
first and the one who rolls her eyes and leaves the room without acknowledging the request.

What were the issues in the 90s do you think?

People will be put off both nursing and midwifery training due to the lack of funded posts. Hundreds of students are qualifying and not even getting their pin due to lack of vacancies in the north west. It’s devastating for them.

I gave birth to my child in the late 90s.

This was my experience.

I had a 6 hour labour followed by an uncomplicated birth.

The midwives were cold and unsupportive. Not unkind specifically but I felt awkward and like a bit of an inconvenience and an irritation and that isn’t really like me naturally. I'm not a people pleaser and I don't generally feel like an inconvenience! I would not get away with speaking to people at work the way I was spoken to and, more than that, I wouldn't want to!

My baby went into SCBU for a week and I was in a side room. No one came to ask me if I wanted to go and see him the following day or even came in to me at all. It was my first child and I wasn't really sure what I was 'supposed' to do.

My baby went into SCBU and it was pretty busy in there during the day time. I expressed a desire to breastfeed, which didn't go down well. As he was my first, I had no idea what I was doing. No one offered any help or support and, instead, huffed and puffed (literally, not an MN huff and puff 😉) about how, "None of the new dads want to see that!" And make a big show of wheeling a screen across the room apologising to all the people who were required to move their feet to allow the screen to pass, whilst explaining that a "young mum over there thinks she wants to breastfeed". I hadn't asked for a screen and it hadn't even occurred to me that there would be screens for that purpose. It was them drawing it to everyone's attention. Not me. And I didn't see why the dads would be bothered.

That also meant me going down two floors to SCBU to feed at night when I was told, "You do realise that if you start with all that now, you'll be getting up to do it every night?" Er... yes..? I do realise that. Babies need feeding right?

Those weren't the only things but I think they're the ones that stand out the most.

As a primary school teacher, it pains me to criticise other women working in a heavily female dominated public sector role but i experienced huge levels of misogyny.

I had my second child 7.5 years later in the same hospital and had a completely.differrnt experience, I'm pleased to say!

I don't know as I was only on the unit for a short time then out into the community with the community midwife. We were warned that they were generally regarded as mean girl types who regarded themselves as superior as they'd done their midwifery training. They didn't pay much heed to nursing type tasks and were taught that birth was a natural process. This is okay up to a point, but to most women it's not a process that they encounter very often so it's still as scary and painful as if they were having a major medical or surgical intervention. It's not like we're in the Victorian era and popping out babies every other year or something. Nursing skills such as pain relief, empathy, good communication and reassurance are very much needed under these circumstances.

My mentor on the community was lovely whereas my midwifery unit mentor was a total bitch and I went sick with anxiety for a week because I couldn't face working alongside her.

Interesting. Why is midwifery such a toxic environment? (Sometimes). I came out of hospital a shadow of my former self after having my first child. I found the midwives (not all and especially one) incredibly mean and the culture very bitchy. Second child in a large training hospital was a much better experience thankfully. But the first experience contributed to my PND. I shut my curtain to keep myself to myself (very unlike me) and after their awful attitude to me I didn’t confide in anyone about how shit I felt.

I get so tired of hearing the same old excuses with maternity care that is ‘insufficient staffing’, which has become a get out of jail card, when imo and experience, there is a real deep rooted problem and has been for years and years, of poor care, bad attitude and a lack of respect for pregnant woman by too many midwives. I am pleased that these midwives are under fitness to practice and it’s about time.

I gave birth to my first child in te UK, midwife lead. It was horrendous. I am sure that they're doing the best they can. I genuinely think they have to much responsibility.
Pregnant care is consultant lead in Ireland.
My first baby was really ill, despite me saying I'd never felt a kick it wasn't investigated until the actual birth where I met a few consultants.

I wonder if nursing staff on gynae wards behave in the same way, in which case, misogyny might account for it. I've never been on a gynae ward, so I can't say what they're like.

I must say, the post natal midwives behaved very strangely after I'd had ds2 following a planned section. They kept taking him away if I left the bed area to visit the loo or something. I didn't leave him for very long of course, but when I'd return to my bed area, his cot was empty. They also took him overnight a couple of times. I'm nd so perhaps they thought he needed rescuing or checking over in case I was dodgy I didn't dare complain as I was frightened of them. They also swaddled him too tightly and made him overheat and kept removing the tiny teddy I used to put in at his foot end (so it wouldn't fall on his face). With ds1 I was put in a side room (emergency section) and ignored. The delivery and theatre staff were fine though.

The horrid that is the postnatal ward has put me off ever having another child, this includes shoddy postnatal care. I think a lot of women are having less children because of pregnancy and birth as well.

The reality is there’s a shortage of midwives so if they have a registration they get hired.

I think from what I saw from MW with last pg in new area for birth for me bad practise spreads like an infection.

It really depended on who you got what you experienced and mid way through pg I got assigned a new bad one and she put my and my youngests lives at risk unnecessarily. One who like her mentor had trained in a neigbouring area which hit headlines in recent years for serious bad maternity practises going back decades. By time left area few years later more and more mother had horror stories - including a preventable still birth because they dimssed the mother concerns and missed warning signs.

We did complain about poor care and managemnet agreed we had cause but complant was managed away by MW manager - and frankly we had lots of other stuff going on so left it. We've seen similar with elder care wards in same hospital can have staff over worked but doing their best and showing care while another in same hospital has care so bad it risks lives.

I think ironically given NHS seems full of managers it's a management issues - bad pactises are allowed to creep in and spread. NHS does have form for blaming individuals but I do think certian professionals I've seen should have behaved well more professionally.

We were considering possiblity of another child- it's probably best we didn't in end with money and time but yes the poor experince meant we could never face it again there and it took so long to move felt age gap was too big.

So it was a factor in decision - so there must be many others also factoring poor maternity care in.

Don't now anything about this midwifery situation but there is an NHS ambulance trust (South East possibly) who did a mass recruitment of paramedics from Poland a few years ago and are now using fitness to practice/ HCPC to get rid of a lot of them as they are not to standard.
So it could be something similar at this trust.

The NHS seems to regard all patients as a total nuisance and something horrible to get rid of as soon as possible. They particularly dislike the ones who raise concerns about their pregnancy/child/condition as that gives them extra work to do. I get that they're understaffed or whatever, but there have to be limits otherwise people die and avoidable baby deaths are particularly tragic.

I think they should be carrying out psychometric testing to weed out the mean ones. There has to be a way of identifying such unsuitable individuals. Perhaps the understaffing turns people into mean healthcare workers, but I think there has to be a predisposition personality wise.

I came across one or two very hostile midwives. They almost relished seeing patients in distress. Two in particular. One I was so distressed by on the postnatal ward when I was extremely vulnerable, and the mistake she made caused me some serious harm. Her manner was genuinely cruel. I was promised that lessons were learnt about the mistake and tbf my second birth went much better and I was well looked after.

But I also had some really really lovely midwives. I actually named my dd after one.

I think when we are so vulnerable in pregnancy or postnatally, it's extra cruel when a woman is hard hearted to you in that situation. It sounds cliche but I think it's a betrayal of the sisterhood. That woman who was so cruel to me when I was rapidly losing blood...she can go to hell frankly.

I agree about the predisposition to cruelty.

I did come across quite a few midwives who, I could tell, were basically nice women who had become used to seeing dreadful stuff and became hardened to it. There was one who told me to "just walk off the pain" after my EMCS, (because I'm allergic to most painkillers)... but she said it with a smile at least, and got me a cup of tea later.

The genuinely cruel sadistic ones (rare but they do exist) absolutely deserve "fitness to practise" investigations

Certain professions (paramedics) are recognised as being more likely to be referred to the HCPC but only as likely as other professions to be reprimanded.

So it may be a similar situation with midwife's /NMC currently due to the entire service being under massive scrutiny from government, media and public. You'd need to see the outcomes of all 91 of these cases to see if they were even fair referrals in the first place.

To answer OP, yes there are often systemic problems in a hospital Trust that will result in poor patient care. The blame however will always be put on clinical staff, there are various historical examples of that. It’s almost unheard of for the CEO or senior management to be held accountable. But the rot always starts from the top.

I'd want to know if it has anything to do with the culture there, as well as issues of resourcing that you mention OP. There are other examples of Trusts in the NHS having problems stemming from inappropriate pushing of natural childbirth ideology.

I think a dehumanising culture can spread too.

After my first birth I had lost a huge amount of blood and got sepsis. I could barely sit up without feeling faint. I asked a midwife for some stronger pain relief and I heard her saying to a colleague "Bed 44 wants morphine" and the other midwife just tutted and I had to ask again later.

Firstly, I have a fucking name, or at least call me "the woman/mum on bed 44".

(Secondly, I was so so ill, just have a bit of compassion ffs.)

But if dept policy is to refer to real life injured women by their bed numbers, is it any wonder they forget we're real people?

I do have some really lovely stories of seriously kind and compassionate midwives too.

Interesting it's the female midwives being thrown under the bus....I don't see anything about any doctors being held to account!

The thing is, the doctors have way less of an opportunity to be dickheads to you on the postnatal ward or when in labour. They do a ward round, you spend maybe 3mins talking to one.

I have two (ex) midwives in my close social circle. Both committed, professional people who were dedicated to their vocation. Both have left midwifery in the last 18 months citing unworkable conditions and genuine fear that their jobs were untenable and unsafe.