Reading DropYourSword's comment only serves to stress the thing I feel most.
There are lots of things that could be done to improve services but in the end it all boils down to money.
Its not the lack of money that is the issue. The myth is that there is no money.
There is.
As a midwife you are running from one room to the next praying that you manage to be in the right place at the right time when something goes wrong (when, not if!).
So what is happening is things are going wrong and everyone knows about it and tolerating it.
This is called negligence and if it is happening, then why isn't the whistle being blown by those in the profession?
If they don't they are complicit with this and in turn responsible for it. There might be the fear the law suit that could end your career on every shift, but its not just the one extreme incident that could prove to end your career and healthcare providers need to get this into their heads. A pattern of lower level systematic mistreatment and neglect of patients is as serious as a 'never' incident.
Just getting through the shift might be the only concern, however it still doesn't mean a Trust or an individual has 'got away with it'. Given the investigations and prosecutions going on in some hospitals and nursing home for exactly this reason at the moment.
If you think that patients are at risk on a daily basis, rather than just accepting it as part of the job and part of part of budget cuts no matter how much they try and cover it up, you have a legal responsibility to keep reporting the issue to your superiors and the CQC and if necessary the press until this is changed.
As for sense of being powerless. I despise this attitude. Its an excuse. A bad one at that. We simply are not powerless in this country. I do believe its difficult, yes, but not impossible. You have to expose the reality of it first though. You have to understand how these institutions work and what values they are supporting and use their own rhetoric against them.
So in terms of what to say to midwives, I have to start by asking BIG questions of the unions on this one, I'm afraid. What are they there for?
I see the midwife unions doing far more stuff to protect their ideological beliefs than to really push the idea of women being involved in their own care. I hardly see a whisper about this huge issue of how there are thousands of women who are increasingly privately and anonymously describing on internet forums like this, about how their members broke the law regarding consent and totally disregarded their basic rights about dignity. The lack of action smacks more of protecting their own from exposing the extent of unlawful behaviour that is occurring than proper professional integrity.
It reminds me of a thread some time ago, which linked to a midwifery forum which was visible to all, and some of the comments from midwives on it were utterly disgusting and led to such a fuss that the forum became closed to none members. Rather than address the issue publicly, and built confidence in the profession, it was felt better to simply keep these views undercover away from scrutiny and give midwives a place to vent in private. Whether they do it in public or private, its still being deliberately disrespectful to patients and that is not healthy thing to protect. If its done, it should always be done with justifiable and clear and constructive reasons that everyone can understand, whether they are someone who works in the field or whether they are a potential patient. If its not suitable for public consumption, its not suitable full stop. It can't just be done because someone wants a moan or a laugh at the expense of their patient because they have had a bad day.
Complaints always seem to described as 'isolated' and 'rare' occurrences. This is dismissive and belittling. Any and all complaints need to be treated as representing the views of other service users who don't complain, in the same way they are treated within retail as one complaint being the experience of 100 other people. And I feel this dismissive attitude comes from groups not just Trusts. Are these problems far more common and far more accepted and widespread than it should be? Is this 1 to 100 ratio correct or could it be even worse? And if thats the real story, then why is it that the truth isn't coming out more? I think Lavenderhoney's comments really do show the 'can't do' culture very clearly.
Its about an institutionalised contempt for women as patients in maternity and a lack of political will to properly address the core issues, that comes from groups you would think were on womens' side as well as government.
There's too much budget cuts and cost saving...the managers and the life who make these decisions NEED to work clinically at grass roots level to see the impossibility of the workloads they are expecting midwives to cope with along with the expectations of standards.
And yet there is one budget area that is growing every year without fail and without question and without limitation.
Compensation.
This also neglects to address the fact that many of these issues predate the introduction of budget cuts. The way its commonly phrased, you'd be mistaken in thinking that there was somehow a golden age in the past where women were treated considerably better than they are now.
Lets not be under the mistaken impression that half the attitudes and behaviour described about midwives on this thread has got anything to do with budget. Its definitely NOT just about money.
Money is being used far too much as a reason to justify the unlawful.
They need to understand being grossly understaffed means mistakes WILL be made and that they need to be proactive about looking how to avoid those situations, rather than being reactive once something goes wrong.
Bang on they do.
Given the MAJORITY of all compensation claims and the MAJORITY of all pay outs are maternity related, it is staggering that there is no move whatsoever to link the budget of maternity with the budget for compensation.
This is where the money is.
The problem is the managers and splitting budgets by department. Healthcare does not begin and end when you enter one department and are referred to another, but thats essentially what is happening.
This is THE political issue.
This is the ONLY way you solve the problem.
The problem is NOT the number of CS women are having. The problem is NOT the fact that women no longer have confidence in their bodies - meaning that 'normal' births need promoting (this is what is known as PROPAGANDA and this is generally what is used to cover up underlying issues within a society rather than tackling its core elements). The problem ISN'T a celebrity culture of 'Too Posh Too Push'. The problem ISN'T that women are 'being selfish' by delaying starting their families later and subsequently having more issues as a result. The problem ISN'T that women are more obese than they were and somehow 'get what they deserve' for not looking after themselves prior to getting pregnant. The problem is NOT that women are more liberated sexually than they were and they should have kept their legs crossed and not been so stupid to get pregnant. The problem ISN'T that women are 'more demanding' than they were 30 years ago in the care they expect as a basis right. It IS their basic right. The problem ISN'T that women have an 'unrealistic' expectation of giving birth due to the way that childbirth is portrayed in the media. The problem ISN'T EVEN the broken promises of 5000 more midwives, as the irony isn't really that there is a 'shortage' of midwives. With courses over subscribed and trained midwives still struggling to find jobs, its this budget being stuck in unconnected pots of money, not a lack of people who can do the job and the focus of this campaign is all wrong.
All of the above real miss the point and many of these very real opinions - all of which I have seen come from professionals - do a huge disservice to women.
When I think of all the other issues that are in the press from whatever group I constantly have to keep questioning, why so few of them are drawing attention to where all the money is really going. Its all about agendas... Why IS the point being missed?
Are agendas of the profession as a whole, matching the best interests of the patient? To me the answer is very clearly that they aren't and this has led to a wholesale breakdown in trust between the two.
Bottomline. If we can afford to spend billions on a compensation budget, then its not as if we don't have the money. We clearly are finding it from somewhere and its currently just being pissed up the compensation wall.
The question is can we afford to ignore the link between the two and allow this bill to continue to rise rather than stating ignorantly that we can't afford X, Y and Z in maternity which seems to dominate the debate?
