Vacant midwife posts need filling says Royal College
Commenting on the NHS vacancy statistics published today by the NHS Information Centre, Jon Skewes, Director of Employment Relations and Development at the Royal College of Midwives, said; “Any midwifery post remaining empty is a concern because we have experienced a huge surge in the birthrate over recent years and midwife numbers have still to catch up. A vacant post means there is a midwife missing who could be helping to provide safe and high quality care.”
Nursing Times - Friday, 27th August 2010
Aid to Pakistan should not include formula milk
The 129-year-old British Royal College of Midwives commenting on crisis for pregnant women and their babies affected by floods in Pakistan says aid should not include formula milk. Janet Fyle, professional policy advisor, at the institution said: “Women do not stop giving birth simply because there is an emergency. In any disaster situation pregnant women and children are at greatest risk.
Associated Press Pakistan - Wednesday, 26th August 2010
Birth rise down to couples 'cosying up' in cold spell
The severe winter weather which forced people to remain in their homes at the start of the year is thought to be behind a baby boom. Guay Ong, the manager of the Royal College of Midwives, says the key to dealing with a baby boom is planning. She said: 'Maternity services in Portsmouth will have known this is coming, because of the scans women have. 'They will have been planning for this, making sure they have enough midwives to care for the extra numbers of women due to give birth next month. They will be ready to cope.’
Daily Telegraph (Also appeared in Portsmouth News -Scottish Daily Express – Daily Mail) Wednesday, 26th August 2010
Home births in Wales double over decade
The number of women who give birth to their children at home in Wales has more than doubled in less than a decade, figures have revealed. There has also been a rise in women giving birth in midwife-led units. Helen Rogers, head of the Royal College of Midwives in Wales, said: "It's excellent. But we can still do better." Over the past eight years, the assembly government has encouraged healthy women with low-risk pregnancies to have their babies out of hospitals.
BBC Wales Online - Wednesday, 25th August 2010
New nurses struggling to find jobs
The Scottish Government faced calls to protect frontline services as unions warned newly qualified nurses and midwives are struggling to find jobs in the NHS. The Royal College of Midwives Scotland also spoke of similar concerns and suggested that there may soon be no jobs at all for newly-qualified midwives.
The Scotsman (Also appeared in The Morning Star, Google.com, Scotland on Sunday) Monday, 23rd August 2010
Home birth debate
A "concerted and calculated" backlash by some doctors is downplaying the benefits of home births and has involved the use of "flawed" evidence to support claims that babies were more likely to die if not born in hospital, the general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives claims today. Cathy Warwick, who heads the body that represents 38,000 midwives in Britain, has been incensed by a recent paper presented by US academics last month that claimed a home birth carried three times the risk. In an interview with the Guardian, Warwick described the Lancet editorial as "sweeping and misogynistic". She said midwives now "feel there is a concerted and calculated global attack and backlash against home birth which is being unfairly pilloried by some sectors of the global medical maternity establishment. There is a danger that risk during childbirth is presented in a way which is leading women to believe that hospital birth equals a safe birth. It does not. There is no hard and fast guarantee that a woman will have a safer birth in a hospital than at home. There are concerns globally that midwives, who have long campaigned for mother-friendly births, have lost ground in recent years. Hannah Dahlen, the president of the Australian College of Midwives, backed her counterpart in Britain saying that "intense medical lobbying and strategically released journal articles" had put the profession in Australia "in the hands of the medical profession".
The Guardian (Also appeared in the Maily Mail – Daily Telegraph – Evening Standard – MediaIndia – TopnesUK – BBC Breakfast TV – BBC Online – BBC Radio 5 Live – BBC London – BBC Leeds – Morning Star – parentdish.co.uk) Monday, 16th August 2010
Obesity epidemic is putting unborn children at risk
Babies born to women who were overweight during their pregnancy are more likely to suffer from congenital abnormalities or childhood obesity. They were also found to be at a greater risk of being stillborn. Health professionals are dealing with "an epidemic of obesity" among pregnant women as weight gain across the population continues to rise, experts warn today. About half of women of childbearing age are now either overweight (with a BMI measured at 25-29.9) or obese (with a BMI of 30 or above), according to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).... Louise Silverton, the deputy general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said: "There is a real need to address the issue of obesity, and this draft guidance shows this is particularly important for pregnant women. The growing volume of evidence shows that the health of a mother with obesity is further compromised by the pregnancy, also impacting the health of her unborn baby.
The Independent (also appeared on BBC 1 Breakfast TV– BBC Radio Five Live - 12 regional BBC radio stations) Tuesday 27th July 2010
Obese women "should slim before conceiving"
Overweight women should lose weight and have counselling before they get pregnant because being fat poses such a serious risk of them having a premature baby, doctors are to warn. Women carrying excess weight have up to a 30 per cent greater chance of having a baby before it reaches 37 weeks gestation, medical researchers in Canada write in today's British Medical Journal. Premature babies are at much higher risk of dying or suffering a range of illnesses and impairments... Janet Fyle said: “Can they afford the right food? Can they get access to gyms or swimming pools? There are social contexts to this one size fits all.”
The Guardian - 19th July 2010
The NHS pension scheme is hardly a tax guzzling monster
By Cathy Warwick, RCM general secretary
Men retiring at 65 can expect to live another 13 years, while women who retire at 60 should live for another 22 years, according to official figures. Even as the state retirement age creeps up, people can still expect to live for years in retirement, especially as life expectancy climbs ever higher. It is because of this that pensions are vitally important, and precisely why the coalition government’s approach to public sector pensions is so very disheartening. Somehow politicians have talked themselves into the policy of condemning both private and public sector workers to a cash strapped, retired life of misery. That is the real issue here - not that public sector workers enjoy the remnants of a half decent pension, but that pension provision for those in the private sector is so weak. Politicians need to focus on building up financial security in retirement for all, not stamping on what little decent pension provision still remains for some.
Nursing Times - 19th July 2010
Out-of-hours birth in Scotland 'puts newborn at increased risk of dying'
Babies who are born outside normal working hours are more likely to die than other infants, a large Scottish study reveals. The worrying findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggest that births which happen outside of Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, are 45 per cent more likely to lead to death. It means between five and ten baby deaths in Scotland a year - and between 50 and 100 in the UK - are estimated to be due to the increased risks of being born outside normal hours. About 70 per cent of births take place at these times. The research adds to growing concerns about the standards of out-of-hours care delivered by the NHS in Scotland and across the UK. Last month, fears were raised about the quality of locum doctors provided by agencies, who often provide evening and weekend cover in Scottish hospitals. The latest study, based on more than a million births, suggests lower levels of staffing and less availability of senior doctors out-of-hours could be one possible explanation for the higher risks faced by babies born outside the normal working day. …Gillian Smith of the Royal College of Midwives said concerns over differences in care out-of-hours had been raised for several years. She added it was important lessons were learned from this study.
Scotsman - Friday, 16th July 2010
A new era for maternity services
Commenting on the white paper ‘Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS’ published today, Cathy Warwick, General Secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said: “This signals a new era for maternity services in England, if the promise in the document becomes a working reality. The focus on quality and outcomes is significant and should place the mother and baby at the heart of care. It also sits much more comfortably with maternity services than a focus on targets.
Yorkshire Post - Wednesday, 14th July 2010
Move to halt plans for ‘baby factories’ welcomed by midwives
Midwifery leaders have welcomed government moves away from the centralisation of maternity units into large “baby factories”. Before the general election the Conservatives opposed the closure of smaller obstetric units, which result in more births in other larger units nearby, and said they were leading to “bigger and bigger baby factories”. Health secretary Andrew Lansley has now ordered a review of plans to close a unit at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury. He has also ordered a review of planned changes to hospitals in London, which include closing the maternity unit at King George’s Hospital, part of Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust. … Royal College of Midwives policy director Sean O’Sullivan said Mr Lansley’s words appeared to favour more smaller units. “It is hard to demonstrate that moving services to fewer sites offers women more choice rather than less,” he said. However, he warned centralisation proposals might return, saying that those who had planned them had argued they were clinically justified and necessary. Mr O’Sullivan said for simple births, small units provided better care and experience. He said: “For women at low risk, in smaller units, there is less chance they are going to receive inappropriate highly medicalised care. They are also better for recruitment and retention of midwives.”
Nursing Times - Tuesday, 13th July 2010
The Independent View: Public sector pensions – far from gold-plated
Teeing up public sector workers like midwives for cuts in their pensions, Nick Clegg spoke recently about the “unreformed gold-plated public sector pension pots” that people like firefighters and soldiers enjoy. We hear a lot about the long-term cost of public sector pension schemes, as if they are a fiscal time-bomb ready to explode at the heart of the public finances. Firstly, let’s take a look at the reality of these bounteous public sector pension pots. Take the average pension for a female NHS worker, £5,000. What is worse, half of all women pensioners who have worked in the NHS get a pension of less than £3,500 per year. That’s not so much gold-plated as tin-plated.
Libdem Voice - Tuesday, 13th July
Care lacking for bereaved parents
Doctors still do not understand why some babies are stillborn More than half of maternity units are still lacking a dedicated bereavement support midwife, a survey suggests. The stillbirth charity Sands also found that nearly half have no specific room on the labour ward for a mother whose baby has died, where she is shielded from the sounds of other newborns. Seventeen babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth a day in the UK… "The rates of stillbirth in the UK may mean midwives can have limited experience in caring for bereaved families," said Gail Johnson of the Royal College of Midwives. "This is why it is so important that services are developed and commissioned to meet the needs of parents who experience stillbirth or neonatal loss.
BBC (Also appeared in The Independent & The Scotsman) Monday, 12th July 2010
Binge drinking women are fuelling a surge in the number of babies born with learning disabilities, a Government-funded expert claimed yesterday.
Many women between 19 and 24 who drink in the early stages of pregnancy simply don’t realise they have conceived, he said. Professor Barry Carpenter, a special needs project director, said: “Drunken young women are poisoning their babies – it is child abuse by the umbilical cord.” He told a Royal College of Nursing summit on children with learning problems that the main cause of a 25 per cent increase in children with learning disabilities in just five years was mothers getting drunk while pregnant. “In the UK we have the highest binge drinking levels in the world,” he said. Professor Carpenter, National Director of the Education Department’s Complex Needs Research Project, came under fire from Mervi Jokinen of the Royal College of Midwives. She said: “Whilst Professor Carpenter’s ultimate aims may be laudable, I think that his use of language is perhaps less than helpful in encouraging these young women to think about their actions.” And parent lobbying groups said they were horrified by the remarks. Margaret Morrissey from Parents Outloud said: “There will be some women who binge drink when pregnant and who have children with learning problems.
Daily Express (Also appeared in the Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail) Friday 9th July 2010
Home birth risks under scrutiny
Women who plan home births recover more rapidly from childbirth, but there is a higher risk of their child dying, an international study suggests. US analysis of more than 500,000 births in North America and Europe found death rates for babies in planned home births were double that of those in planned hospital births. But the risk was still low, at 0.2%. The researchers argued that the safety of home births may have previously been overplayed by the fact that when there are complications and a woman is rushed to hospital, any adverse outcome is recorded as a hospital birth. Mervi Jokinen of the Royal College of Midwives, said the study was interesing, but questioned the validity of its findings for the UK. "Comparison of the results is difficult because the study's authors are working with data collected differently in many countries. Here we have services delivered by midwives who are skilled and experienced at home births and resuscitating newborns. This is perhaps in contrast to many of the other countries this research covers."
Daily Mail (Also appeared in a range of newspapers and radio and television) 2nd July 2010
Is breastfeeding 'creepy'
The question of how to feed your newborn has long been a sensitive issue. But this month Kathryn Blundell, deputy editor of Mother and Baby magazine, has stirred even more debate by describing breast-feeding as "creepy". Janet Fyle is The Royal College of Midwives' midwifery advisor and a practising midwife. She thinks there are benefits achieved through breast-feeding, but thinks that women who cannot should not feel guilty. She says: "There are benefits of breast-feeding for both mother and baby. The benefit for the child is that it gives immunological benefits, stops them having infections and they bond quicker with their mother. When mothers are breast-feeding, they are looking directly at the infant to see the child react back. For the mother, breast-feeding really burns calories. It helps you get back to your pre-pregnancy state quicker. When women are pregnant they lay down a lot of fat on the backs of their arms and their thighs, this is burnt very quick through breast-feeding and it also prevents ovarian and breast cancers in women There are babies whose mothers cannot breast-feed, so we need to recognise that. Midwives are by no means saying that every woman should breast-feed.
The Sun
Expectant mothers to be given smoking breath tests: Health watchdog tells midwives to challenge all pregnant women
Intrusive? Expectant mothers will be asked to take a breath test to check if they are telling the truth about smoking. All pregnant women are to be put under pressure to take a breath test to check if they are telling the truth about smoking. Midwives will be told to 'encourage' mothers-to-be to have the carbon monoxide tests at their very first antenatal appointment. 'Most pregnant women are fully aware that smoking is bad for their unborn child and would be keen to cut down or stop and avail themselves of any help offered.' Sue Macdonald, research manager at the Royal College of Midwives, questioned the emphasis on the carbon monoxide monitor, saying it could make women feel they were being treated as liars - and could also hinder the battle against superbugs. “It is crucial that health practitioners, including midwives, focus on being supportive rather than making women feeling guilty, or as though they may not be truthful,' she said. Use of the carbon monoxide monitor has the potential to make women feel guilty and not engaged. There is also the cost implication of all midwives carrying monitors.”
Daily Mail
Pay cut’
The announcement brought immediate condemnation from workers in the health service. Jon Skewes, Director of Employment Relations and Development at the Royal College of Midwives, said they were effectively being told to take a pay cut. “It is highly paid bankers who have driven us into this financial hole,” Skewes said in a statement. “It is a real shame that this hole is now being filled with the wages of midwives and other hard working public sector workers.” However, health comes off relatively lightly in Osborne’s “tough but fair” budget. The Chancellor said the government would honour earlier promises to ring fence increases in health service funding in real terms.
(Also appeared on the BBC and in The Independent)
Scrap 'breast is best' slogan, say campaigners
Campaigners are calling on the government to drop the "breast is best" slogan because it is not convincing new mums to breast feed, they say. The Breastfeeding Network wants breastfeeding to be seen as the norm - not something special - as the slogan suggests. It's time to normalise breastfeeding and create the right conditions for mothers to breastfeed in comfort. NHS leaflets given to pregnant women and new mothers say that breastfeeding protects against obesity, allergies, asthma and diabetes. Janet Fyle, midwifery advisor at the Royal College of Midwives, says she supports the view of The Breastfeeding Network that the "breast is best" slogan is outdated. It's time to normalise breastfeeding and create the right conditions for mothers to breastfeed in comfort, wherever they go, whether that's in a restaurant or a shop when they're out and about," she said.
BBC Online
No golden pensions in the public sector
We hear too often about the long-term cost of public sector pension schemes as if they are a time bomb ready to explode at the heart of the public finances (Gold-plated pensions a myth, union tells Clegg, 15 June). Thankfully, in its report last week, the government's own Office for Budget Responsibility exposed the future costs of public sector pensions to be steady, predictable and sustainable. Despite its portrayal as a tax-guzzling monster, the NHS pension scheme actually hands billions of pounds over to the taxpayer each year. More is paid into the fund than is paid out to pensioners, and all that surplus goes to the Treasury. Your report also repeats the deputy prime minister's accusation that public sector pensions are unreformed. Yet the NHS pension scheme has been reformed.
The Guardian
Women who die during childbirth across the world
Frances Day-Stirk from the Royal College of Midwives is interviewed on BBC Radio 4 discussing the challenges of meeting goals set to reduce maternal mortality across the world. she said: “The WHO estimates that we need 350,000 more midwives. We've had here in Washington a very high level midwifery symposium on strengthening it globally, a call to action has been put out by UNFPA.”
BBC Radio 4 (PM Programme) 7 June 2010
(Item starts 47 minutes and 52 seconds into the programme)
Hospitals warned on vaginal swabs
Midwives and other staff involved in delivering babies are being warned about leaving swabs inside the vaginas of women who have just given birth. The National Patient Safety Agency has issued an alert across England and Wales urging staff to take more care. The watchdog has received reports of 99 cases over the past two years where the swabs have been left inside women. While this is a small fraction of the 500,000 births a year, the NPSA said it still wanted to improve standards. Commenting on the recommendations, Mervi Jokinen of the Royal College of Midwives, said: "These guidelines reaffirm the need for awareness and vigilance from midwives and other health professionals."
BBC Online 26 May 2010
Baby boom for the over-forties but overall birth rate is
The number of children born to mothers in their forties has almost trebled in the past two decades and continues to rise, latest figures show. The latest health data for England and Wales, published by the Office for National Statistics yesterday, shows that the total number of live births dropped slightly last year — the first annual decrease since 2001. Louise Silverton, deputy general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said that the decline was “a tiny morsel of good news. The birth rate has gone up by 19 per cent since 2001 yet the number of midwives has risen by only 11 per cent over the same period,” she said. “The figures also mask the fact that an increasing number of births are becoming more complicated, requiring more of midwives' time.”
The Times 25 May 2010
All babies must be checked for jaundice, watchdog says
Health workers should no longer rely on instincts alone to judge the severity of jaundice in a newborn baby, guidance from the health watchdog recommends. The Royal College of Midwives welcomed the new guidelines. "Most cases of jaundice in newborns will be harmless, but a very small number could potentially be dangerous to the baby," said the RCM's education and professional development advisor Gail Johnson. "We would advise any new parents who may be concerned about possible jaundice in their child to contact their midwife or doctor straight away."
BBC
Report urges Northern Ireland maternity care strategy
A report on maternity wards in Northern Ireland said all trusts should maintain appropriate levels of obstetric, anaesthetic and midwifery cover. The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said the report revealed "critical gaps" in the current system. (BBC Online)
Midwives' leader warns against 'baby factories'
Guardian interview with RCM general secretary, Cathy Warwick. (The Guardian Society Profile)
Royal College of Midwives warns against NHS cuts
Cuts being planned for the NHS could lead to the emergence of “baby factories”, the disappearance of some hospitals from cities and a general worsening of healthcare in the UK, the Royal College of Midwives trade union has said (Daily Telegraph)
Single mothers have 'poor experience' of NHS maternity care
A study by Dr Veena Raleigh, senior policy fellow at the King's Fund, co-written by Ian Seccombe, a senior official at the Care Quality Commission, has concluded that single women receive poorer maternity care than those with partners. (The Guardian)
