Letter from House of Commons - Miscarriage!

[FlamesparodyOfAChristmasName]

That was bloody quick! I copied the letter to send to my MP about miscarriages and maternity wards, very nice positive sounding reply:

"Thank you for your email with regard to the plight of women who have miscarriages.

I agree with you that women who have had a miscarriage should not be put in maternity wards. I can sympathise with you greatly on this matter since my wife suffered from several miscarriages.

I have taken up your concerns with the Minister at the Department of Health and will, of course, let you know what response I receive as soon as possible."

Anyone else hearing back?

bump for the other letter writers

Flames, I've been away for a while. Could you please post the link so that I can email as well.

Which MP? Good response.

Good.

Lewisfan wrote the letter on here

Will link my thread in there - couldn't find it when I wanted to post this

Oh, It was John Butterfill

Brilliant!

I got this from Murdo Fraser MSP

Dear Ms GreebosWhiskers

Thank you for your email message of 11 December.

The issue that you raise about women who have suffered a miscarriage having to be kept in a ward in a maternity wing is a very real one and I can only imagine the distress that this practice causes.

I have today put down two Parliamentary Questions on the issue which are noted below. I will let you know when I have a response from Ministers.

Yours sincerely
Murdo Fraser MSP

Two Parliamentary Questions

To ask the Scottish Government what is its policy on women who miscarry their unborn baby having to be placed in a maternity ward with women giving birth?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it issues any guidance to Health Boards on placing women who miscarry their unborn baby in a maternity ward with women giving birth?

Great responses both. I think that the practice is so obviously distressing to anyone who hears about it that it has a really good chance of being changed. It would be a really good vote swinger and if I was in government I would pounce on it.

My GYN was shocked at the policy of having women who are actively miscarrying or awaiting D&Cs in a labour ward, and I had the proof - I kept the leaflets the hospital gave me.

The hospitals have no beds and no staff and no money to restructure and the department of health know this. Can't wait to see what kind of spin they put on whatever answer they give you.

They need to put money into restructuring. They need the staff whether they are on a gynae ward or a labour ward.

they need more staff in all areas of women's care.

but i'm sick of spin and i've got bigger balls than most men despite being a woman.

i'm sick of taking this all lying down and giving up just because of excuses, Anne, and because of this that and the other and people in Africa are starving and old people don't have this and that and children need this and that and blah blah blah ad nauseum.

i'm sick of coming on here and reading about babies who die during childbirth because of lack of resources and people not doing their damn job.

of women living in intense pain and defecating out of their vaginas and waiting months on end to see someone who is supposed to help them but instead fobs them off.

of marriages falling apart after a woman is fobbed off during a miscarriage or childbirth and is no longer able to have a normal married sex life.

but most of all i'm sick of reading 'well, there's no money for XYZ so let's all just give up, break out the fiddles and watch it burn, baby.'

sorry, but f*ck that.

and FWIW, I was one of those women who was told to sit and wait their turn on a bed for surgery to remove their dead baby from their womb in the labour unit.

and spend the night in the labour ward 'recovering' from the procedure in a labour unit.

'there's no money'.

yeah, where then you're at least going to tell me where the hell it all went, whoever you are, and you'd better not try to stonewall me because i may have been born yesterday, but i've been up all night.

@ the passion, but and at how you got it

I'm fighting with you every step of the way

Well said Expat, there is actually money, it is just spent badly.

there is money in the nhs just poorly managed but ime a lot of people just don't give a f*ck about miscarriage I have had 3 and had terrible treatment on the nhs

I finally had my second child following four goes of ivf and he nearly died during the delivery because the midwives couldn't give a f*ck either so it is not all about money it is also about the staff in the nhs actually wanting to look after people in a compassionate and caring manner

and I used to work in the nhs and was a nurse manager so no one tell me it isn't like that because I know exactly what it is like particularly in maternity services

sorry but expat and I have obviously had similar experiences

I'm a staff nurse. Everytime we complain to administration when people die unnecesarily, starve to death, die in the waiting room due to lack of nursing staff at a time when 80% of the new grad nurses cannot find jobs...THEY tell us it is due to the fact that there is no money.

Whitehall is cutting income off to trusts/hospitals.

It is now normal for staff nurses to work a 15 hour day and only get paid for 8. The trust tells us that it is because there is no money to hit the shop floor with.

Nulabour has instituted targets that have run the hospitals into the ground, destroyed patient care and caused some trusts to have enormous deficits. Then the government cuts off income and underfunds these hospitals. They have no staff or beds yet when they miss a target they get fined.

There is a room on the my ward where the roof is caving in and tiles and rain are hitting the floor so we stopped admitting patients to that room. It has been that way for months and the hospital has told us that there is no "money to fix it".

The other night our hospital had no free beds and casualty was full. They were breaching their targets for 4 hours or less of a wait in a&e. I was ordered to take an admission into that room. I refused and was written up for insubordination.

I asked my manager if they don't have enough beds and staff why don't they build an extension and hire some of the new grad nurses who cannot find jobs? They told me that the government has cut them off from income and they may not even be paying the staff soon.

So yes...there is money but it never gets to the shop floor.

The dickheads at the department of health know all this. Their job is to spin spin spin. They are very well aware of what is going on.

A few weeks ago they had a&e staffed with 1 nurse only and no one else on the busiest day of the week and multiple people died in the waiting room. I'm serious.

In the meantime they will not allow us to use agency staff...citing the fact that there is no money for it becaues the government has essentially shut us off.

They will not allow any regular staff to do overtime and if they have to do mandatory overtime it is unpaid.

Last night they put 10 beds in a hall and nursed patients there because there are no beds and loads of admissions. So I took those 10 on top of my other 35 by myself.

I agree with you , it is shit.

The DOH gets enough letters from the staff and has been for years and we get a nice reply back and nothing gets done. Everytime something bad happens to a patient (like expat) we document it and send it to the bosses. They give us some sickly sweet reply and nothing changes.

Haven't had a response yet but I think our MP is away.

Maybe there would be more money if there were less suits, less £70,000 pebbles to improve the ambiance of the area and less compo having to be paid out due to mistakes.

sorry to triple post but we take gynae on my ward including miscarriages. I took an admit into a bay full of elderly ladies with dementia who were spreading shit on the walls and wailing. The admit was a young women who just suffered her second stillbirth in as many years and was obviously not in a good state of mind. She was not happy of being in a bay with alzheimers patient with poo under their fingernails trying to crawl into her bed. We busted our arses trying to get her moved to another bed (hopefully a private side room somewhere. There was nothing.

Yep- our hospital is making hundreds of nurse redundancies. They are closing beds yet there are no beds in the first place. They won't fix leaking roofs, they won't allow nurses to do overtime. They will not staff the wards. They will not hire nurses. None of our new grad nurses can get jobs. They have cut us off to all further training....this is part of the long term plan towards financial recovery.

But they are advertising for 3 new management consultants at £70,000 a year.

Twats. All of them.