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

No it isn’t how we’re trained - my uni back in the early 2000s was fantastic at teaching woman centered care including how to care for women requesting ‘out of norm’ treatment. Independent midwives were part of the teaching team.
Ive mentioned up thread about the continuous churn of mums and babies on the wards, many of whom only stay a matter of hours. This leads to a lack of relationship between midwife and woman and promotes robotic like care.
I also agree that there are midwives who are just downright nasty and I wonder if it’s about power and control.

Just to give an indication of how much time each woman might receive on a 12.5 hour shift:
3 drug rounds 90 minutes
2 handovers 45 minutes
1 hour break

12 women and babies per midwife gives 38 minutes per family.

That sounds a lot but when most of that needs to be admission or discharge paperwork, many women have complex needs, breastfeeding support, it doesn’t leave time for any care. That’s wrong for everyone.

Having said all that, there is absolutely no excuse for rudeness, bad comments and attitude and complete lack of empathy.

A minor thing but I’ll always remember the midwife who laughed and told me I still looked 6 months pregnant one day after birth when I’d had a nightmare delivery and baby in NICU. Just why??

Sorry me again! Midwifery is my passion so I’ve always got a lot to say!
I have worked with the most amazing midwives who give their absolute all and make such a huge difference. It’s so lovely to work with them and their positivity rubs off on everyone. So culture does affect the care given

I have a physical disability and I'm a wheelchair user. I'll never walk.

16 years ago when my first was born, the assumption that I also had a learning disability or I was of limited intelligence was unreal. Easy read documents being provided as standard 'because you have a disability', infantilising language (a c section being described to me a a 'cut in tummy to get baby out') were just some of them. The icing on the cake was being referred to social services 'because we dont think you'll be able to cope having a baby and looking after yourself as well'. This was following a request where I asked if someone could help me push by baby down to the breakfast room because surprise surprise you can't push a cot and a wheelchair at the same time. I went without breakfast that day.

And before anyone jumps on me, I think easy read documents are great and work really well for those who need them. As is language modified to the person and situation. However it was fairly clear from the conversations I was having with DH and the book I was reading at the time that I was literate, conversant amd able to understand. And as for not coping being a wheelchair user- being able to pick the DC up from school, hook the bags over the back of the chair, plonk the DC on your lap and have a great chat as you rolled home were some of my best primary school memories.

Thank you for sharing, it's really interesting to get a midwife pov.

I'm sorry this thread has turned out to be a "many midwives are sadistic psychopaths" thread; I think we just remember the horrid ones.

I came across some seriously kind and lovely ones who went above and beyond and I remember to this day and I wrote heartfelt thank yous to them. One of them I named my DD after (not Patience, another nice one!) There were also several who were just professional and ordinarily conpassionate and did their jobs and I can't fault that either, I'm grateful to them too.

Oh please don’t feel bad - there are too many women suffering from substandard care and staff. The more it’s shared, the more hope I have that things will change! My point was mostly that a positive culture and high expectations really influence how everyone behaves.

I'm really sorry to hear this and I think this is the fault of some stupid drop down menus in the system. I suppose they have one ticky box for disability and no subcategories.

Not at all the same thing but another example of the stupid broad drop down menu options...I'm down as "mixed, asian" in the system and kept getting referred for extra tests (somewhat invasive/uncomfortable tests) for a particular thing that ethnic south Asians are more at risk of in pregnancy. The part of Asia where I'm ethnically from has a lower risk of it than other ethnicities including white British, (because Asia is a seriously large place), and I kept having to explain this when declining the tests. I kept being nagged about putting my baby at extra risk by declining the test because they couldn't understand this - only one midwife got it and pulled up some extra guidance on her system to confirm what I was saying.

There's also sometimes a habitual hostility from HCPs to patients who "do their own research" - I get it, I really do, there's some terrible misinformation out there - but this also sometimes manifests as being patronising to us when we have legitimately read and understood something and are trying to discuss it.

I had so many conversations with doctors before both births where they'd say "xyz is not recommended because of increased risk" and I'd ask them, ok, can you quantify the extra risk? Because what you're asking me to endure is going to have a significant impact in terms of pain/distress etc and if you're saying the extra risk is going from 1 in a million to 2 in a million then I'm content with taking on that risk! Maternal distress has to be part of that risk equation! And every time I raised this, I got mumbles back. No, they didn't have the numbers to hand. No, they couldn't even guesstimate them.

Totally agree. The leadership is everything in terms of the culture.

Op mentioned the doctor vs midwife thing, why aren't more doctors being investigated... I actually found once i got to a consultant they were much better at this sort of conversation because they did understand relative risk and they could, at least in the abstract, understand the need to add risk of maternal trauma to the equation. Whereas so many midwives just said to me "you have to have xyz because of stillbirth risk" or whatever so i got basically coerced to have so many invasive and distressing things done to me under the threat of my DD dying and it being all my fault for declining. When, in hindsight, most of those eventualities were super rare.

For my second I had an ELCS - actually it was medically required so not exactly elective - and I really needed it to be under GA because by that point I had debilitating medical trauma. I had to discuss this with so so many people throughout pregnancy just to "check I understood the risks", which felt like having to argue my case continually. It was a male obs consultant who was the easiest conversation and he was the one who looked at all my medical history including previous GAs and decided it wasn't any more of a risk than spinal for me personally. He actually was able to quote stats. He then put on my notes "stop trying to convince Kingdom not to have the GA". He was one of these professionals who would not know me from Adam if he saw me in the street, but took a minute to read my notes before my appointment so the care felt personal.

Sounds very like they are using performance management as an intimidation/manipulation technique.
This happens in education too!

After my c-section once the spinal block wore off I was in absolute agony because the midwife had neglected to get a doctor to prescribe me morphine. Apparently they were too busy to sort it and fobbed me off with paracetamol.

When I was crying with pain, and then vomited, a midwife acidly informed me that women in third world countries would be grateful to even get paracetamol.

4 hours later the shift changed and a new midwife was shocked I'd been left in such a state and took pity on me, set me up a morphine drip and then went to find a doctor to sign it off.

After my elective section with ds2, a midwife tried to get me to take oral diclofenac. I can't take nsaids as they cause me severe gastric pain. I didn't have it down as an allergy on my notes so she refused to accept it. I don't have an allergy as in histamine release, it's an intolerance as in the body reacts badly in a non allergic way. The blasted woman even tried shoving the pill into my mouth! I told her to go away and get me some codeine, which she eventually did. For someone to not even comprehend the existence of an intolerance to something must mean they're pretty dim to be honest.

Perhaps the problem is the midwifery model of care in the first place - why do we accept this for childbirth rather than having care led by actual doctors? Ideology-driven midwives have repeatedly been the cause of fatalities and lifelong injuries.

I think it'll come down to cost sadly.

Even if the birth is doctor led, there will always be a need for some nursing in the recovery period, ie in the postnatal ward.

But I don't see why it can't be "ordinary" nurses who do the postnatal ward. It's doesn't seem particularly different from any other nursing (from my pov as a patient). I suppose the checks they do on the baby are specialised but GPs do similar ones at the 6w check. Certainly from the anecdotes I've heard, most of the really awful experiences have been on the postnatal ward.

I did get about 5min of breastfeeding help (which set me up nicely for 5 years of BF, so I'm grateful for that)... but again you could just have one BF specialist who goes round the ward.

I remember occasionally getting upset when my dd was a newborn because she might one day be a mum and also have a bad childbirth experience and I want to protect her from that. Dh says maybe by then we could afford to pay for her to go private, it sounds like that's way nicer. I'd do anything to prevent her from having the experience I had giving birth to her. But, is it worth a deposit on a house?! Difficult!

My daughter is a student midwife and even though I tried to warn her about the evil midwives that they save especially for the postnatal ward, she was completely shocked by her experience.

How the midwife on shift treated the new mums with utter disdain. Would roll her eyes if they rang the bell (and then ignore them). Told the mums it wasn’t her job to support with breastfeeding. Would tell them she couldn’t give paracetamol. Ignored my DD when she raised one of the mums BP was really high and had been climbing all day. It went on and on and on.

We can blame stress and tiredness and being overwhelmed all we like, but there’s never any reason to treat new mothers the way some midwives do, especially as they actually chose to train as midwives. I just don’t understand it.

When da1 was born (2000) I had 2 midwives and 2 students as I was the only one on the delivery suite. They kept telling me I was having braxton hicks and was exaggerating. After being in hospital an hour they examined me and I was 10cm. I walked to the delivery room got on the bed they broke my waters and two pushes later ds1 was born. I tore internally and externally. They injected anaesthetic and I felt each and every stitch. I screamed I cried I pleaded for them to stop. I broke both stirrups 10 years ago I see the rheumatologist who said 'you've very hyper mobile, local anaesthetic won't work effectively on you'.

When I had my ds2 (2005) I had a midwife and student present. Ds1 was born, exdp cut the cord then they left. I then rang the bell as I was delivering the placenta, they came in, delivered it then left again. We were on our own for two hours before they came back and weighed ds. They brought me some food (which exdp ate as I wasn't hungry), then it took another couple of hours to discharge me at midnight as there was no doctor available. I was glad to get out. Exdp wanted me to stay as he was knackered and wanted to get home, but there was no way I was staying.

I genuinely believe that some women become midwives because they get a real kick out of bullying women when they're weak and vulnerable.

At any other time, if I'd been at my usual fighting weight, I'd have wiped the floor with the midwife who wouldn't sort my morphine. Or the other midwife who insisted I had to shower alone, there and then, with no help, even though I was only 13 hours post c-section and very shakey on my feet. She wouldn't let me wait until DH arrived (due within the hour) and nastily told me that 'she didn't have time to baby me.'

My midwife postnatal for DD1 was the primary school class bully! She laughed when I was struggling to breastfeed.
I felt vulnerable in the maternity wards - didn’t want to come over as demanding or difficult in case that affected how they treated you and thus the welfare of the baby. That’s not right -though understaffing is part of the problem.