So sad. Midwife hung herself after death of baby.

[tiredemma]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234219/New-midwife-hangs-hospital-fails-tell-blame-sick-babys-deat h.html

Newly qualified.

so sad

god poor girl

there is such a blame culture in nursing today

3 senior nurses where I work were suspended last week for not following trust policy

so harsh

unbelievable that this young idwife didn't have the support she needed

this is awful

this is so terribly sad, poor girl and her poor family

However waht's also sad but doesn't surprise me is the lack of support she recieved from nhs management. The stress of working in healthcare where people are at risk can send you over the edge. And although colleagues can be lovely management are generally s**t.

I am assuming she worked shifts? Probably 3-4 12 hour days as these are very common in nursing.

That could explain why her family didnt realise there was a problem for a few days.

When I worked nights I didnt talk to anyone for a couple of weeks at a time.

yeah you're probably right chegirl...

just seems so sad that she didn't seem to talk to anyone in between being suspended and this happening
or those that she did talk to didn't know how bad it was for her, or couldn't help

is it normal to just be suspended like that? and why only her?

thisisyesterday - often don't speak to my parents for weeks on end, doesn't mean they don't support me and care about me. If I'm having a bad time sometimes I try and keep it from them, especially if I know they are dealing with other problems / siblings. I think it is totally unfair to judge.

what a sad story. Such a shame she didn't have proper support from the moment it happened

yeah i guess if she didnt' tell them what had happened.
she must have just felt so awful

shame,fear and humiliation would likely cause her to retreat into herself and become morose and avoidant

agree with chegirl- I have just come off nights and have contacted nobody for days, in fact yesterday my dad text me to see if I was still talking to him!

Im a Newly Qualified nurse, the fear of being blamed for something and losing my registration is massive.

OMG that's just awful, poor woman.

I'm a psychiatric nurse and I completely agree with tiredemma. The fear is there all the time.

You make such tough decisions and I know in my heart that if something goes wrong I will be on my own. It's very tough...

Agree that it is desperately sad and my heart goes out to her. She should have had more support.

Maybe they didn't think to reassure her she wasn't to blame because although the baby "would not have survived anyway due to other problems" had it not had those other problems then sadly it would have been her omission that had killed it.

She did make a mistake that would have been fatal to the baby. I expect she might have still faced disciplinary/competency action for that mistake. "Turned out the baby would have died anyway" does not remove the gravity of the error.

I don't want to sound hard - my heart goes out to that poor girl so much. It's one of the reasons I couldn't work in the medical profession - I would be so scared of making a mistake that killed someone and I would never forgive myself.

*sorry to write "it" I can't remember from the article whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

I agree with chegirl and tiredemma . I have recently returned to nursing and completed the Return to Practice course.
There is now a completely different feel and attitude in nursing compared with when I nursed yrs ago.
All nurses work with a huge fear of being struck off the register. Rightly or wrongly everything we do is tinged with a need to cover ourselves ,usually manifesting in hours of paperwork ultimately taking nurses away from patients.

I know 3 midwives who left the profession because of the fear of litigation and the fact that they are liable for prosecution up to 20 yrs after the baby is delivered.

I feel so sorry for this girl, it's a wonder we have any midwives at all really.

tragic. But you have to wonder, given the emotional demands of medicine, whether HCPs should have a mental health screen prior to embarking on their degree/training.

agree completely with tiredemma chegirl and ggirl. I'm an RMN and now work as a therapist in CAMHS. Your main fear/worry is always whther you have covered yourself with your documentation. as a result following an overdose assessment I spend hours and hours filling in paperwork and feel sick to the stomacj sometimes about whther i've made the right decision in letting an under 16 be discharged from the paediatric ward following an overdose/deliberate sellf-harm.

Same when working shifts hours of paperwork and complete paranoia checking and double checking to ame sure you'd covered yourself. the pressure when you're the "nurse-in-charge" is immense and unrelenting. E.g. everytime to let soemone go on unsecorted leave will they come back? What if they hurt themselves/someone else?

And now in the age of hypervigilance re child protection (which is how it should be don't get me wrong) working with under 16s it's whether you should refer someone or not. Have you missed something that might put that child at risk? As a result you end up deluging social care services with referrals and having some very difficult conversations with family as management paranoia now means a lot more referrals just to cover themselves.

how awful.

this makes me worry for my own midwife who worked for the albany.

Kings has some serious issues with not treating it's midwives properly.

How sad. Regardless of the employment situation, knowing that you had done something which had contributed to the death of a newborn must be an exremely hard cross to bear, especially for someone newly qualified. Very sad for all involved.

Minx-your post hit a raw nerve, especially about Section 17 leave. I work within the Forensic Directorate and feel sick to the pit of my stomach when someones leave doesnt go as planned. Its a massive responsibility to make a decision about 'allowing' someone to go out on leave, especially when that person has posed a huge risk to both themselves and others historically

I don't feel that there is enough support anywhere. I'm currently on my Preceptorship course and every two weeks we have a 'reflective practice group'. My God- it's like gathering around to hear a collective of horror stories.

You only have to look online at the NMC's Fitness to Practice hearings to see that being 'hauled before the board' is quite a possibility- especially for things like drug errors etc.

Scary stuff.

Terribly sad story.

I know loads of nurses and trained as one.

It is terrifying how much pressure is put on nursing and mw staff wrt losing registration, etc. This poor woman will not be the only mw/nurse to have been pushed to such a tragic action.

Isn't this why patients have charts? - surely the doctors attending in this case would also have been notified of unusual situation re. unborn baby with a balloon in their lungs.

I had a high risk birth and the midwifes responsible barely looked up from the CTG machine the entire time I was in labour. Maybe this midwife was kinder and was busy supporting the parents rather than reminding the doctors to do their job.

There was a lovely nurse on DD's ward. She spiked DD's chemo so she couldnt have it that night. Due to ordering and precribing, making up etc that meant an extra couple of days in hospital.

That poor woman's face. She was utterly distraught. Of course it was a pain but it was an accident.

She was so upset because she cared so much and new her patients well enought to realise the impact it would have on a teenage going through prolonged treatment.

How very sad that the very medics who care the most are the ones that are bound to be most affected by accidents and errors, real or imagined.

OMG. Terrible

how awful, poor poor woman and her family

she clearly felt the responsibility all too keenly

I agree that although very tragic and heartbreaking all through, there could very well be more to this poor woman's story, but the reason we have it here -I assume -is to shed light on just how unprofessional hospital management have behaved and how broken lines of communication were.

Healthcare is a unique field in some respects. Most people doing a job can and do make mistakes from time to time. However, mistakes in healthcare can put people's lives at risk. It's such a shame that the public often cannot accept this and as a result, there is an immense pressure on the staff and trusts to protect and defend themselves. I'm not in anyway trying to detract from the death of the baby in this case.

This was a newly qualified member of staff and senior staff were trying to make contact with her. Trust's don't make the decision to report staff to the NMC or GMC lightly and I'm sure they'd have wanted to do everything possible to help this mw keep her job.

This is a tragic situation for all and deeply affected others.

i am very sad for what this poor girl must have gone through, i myself am a midwife and know that anything like this would eat away at you its sad that her management did not speak to her sooner. My heart goes out to her RIP x