Big shake-up for maternity care

[admin]

Some English hospitals should be stripped of doctor-led maternity care and specialist children's services, a government adviser says.

Dr Sheila Shribman, the children and maternity tsar, calls for regional super-centres instead.

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Source: BBC Online, Tuesday, 6 February 2007

[JennyBean]

More MW led units and homebirths?? This sounds too good to be true!! No doubt it is, I wonder just how many hospitals will actually lose thier maternity units and how far high risk mums to be will have to travel to see a consultant. We shouldn't be closing units, just opening more MW led centres and encouraging more homebirths on top of the current maternity units.

Hmm, I'll wait before I start cheering I think!

Jenny

[JayJay]

I read the article yesterday and it sounded too good to be true. As Jenny say we need more MW run units.

We are suppose to be getting a super unit here in Leicester, which means that the smaller units at other hospitals will all close. I like the local unit close to me but the hopes that it will survive are low

Jay

[JennyBean]

Well, I had a chat with a friend who is a consultant and involved in management and she had this to say about it;

"Too good to be true?
Yes. It's total bollocks.
It's cost cutting dressed up as PC-ness. This is exactly what is happening in our area. Encourage homebirths?? I doubt it very much. How many women are going to opt for homebirth if the nearest obstetric unit is potentially up to 2 hours away on twisty, not well maintained roads. Less than currently do I would imagine. It makes perfect sense not to replicate services in hospitals that are 10 miles apart.....but "regional supercentres"? Our regional centre is Newcastle! (She's in Cumbria) Far from improving women's choice, moves like this will decrease it. Put it this way, do you think I would have opted for vbac if I'd had to give birth in a hospital so far away from home? No way I would have taken the risk of such a long journey in labour. And nobody in their right minds would attempt HBAC so far from medical help.

Oh, and talk about not learning from mistakes - these sort of moves have already been tried in Scotland, and stopped because of the significant increase in perinatal mortality that ensued.

Those with high risk births, how they feel about travelling tens or hundreds of miles to see a consultant every month/other week/week? I saw my consultant every day for the last week of my last pregnancy - that would have been feasible if I'd had a 1 hour drive to Carlisle at best, or a 2.5 hour drive to Newcastle at worst (bearing in mind I was on crutches!) wouldn't it? Not!!!!
The pro centralisers will tell you that it would be ok, there would be antenatal clinics at MW led units in peripheral hospitals, so that people wouldn't have to travel. Fine. Except that it would be a different consultant doing the clinic in your local hospital every day. We know that women value continuity - they want to see the same MW, the same doctor each time. If it's somebody different every time, how much time do you waste repeating your story, how many different opinions do you get, especially if there's anything out of the ordinary about you, and how on earth is the doctor meant to assess how things are developing if s/he has never seen you before.
This demonstrates the whole ethos of health care that the current government has. Everything is broken down into a series of tasks, and the name of the game is getting the tasks done as quickly and cheaply as possible. Health care providers are meant to be mere technicians, providing identikit care. What does it matter if you see a different doctor every time if they are all the same? But it is such crap. We know that people value being treated as people, and building up a relationship with their carers. They want continuity, they want local services, they want to be able to choose who their care is provided by - even if that does mean waiting a little longer! But the government tries to convince us that centralisation is a good thing because it improves quality. Yeah, true enough if you've got a rare or complex problem you are better off being treated in a regional centre, but for most things, peripheral hospitals are perfectly adequate. Indeed my experiences of giving birth once in a big city teaching hospital, and twice in a small DGH tells me that there are some definite advantages to small units. It makes my blood boil. Patients are being lied to and deluded and NHS staff are being stabbed in the back at every opportunity by a so called socialist government."

So perhaps we should all be writing to our MP's about it?

Jenny

[Liz1967]

Hi Jenny

Can't say I am surprised by what your friend has said.

As someone due to have a baby in the next 3 months it does frighten me when I hear the horror stories of women's experiences in labour, and the chronic shortage of midwives in some areas.

What makes me angry is the shortage of midwives is down to money - there are many, many midwives who are qualified but unable to get jobs - how mad is that

No wonder staff morale is so low in the NHS, must be so frustrating trying to deliver a high level of care only to be prevented by lack of resources, or resources not being deployed in the best possible way.

Love
Liz
xx

[Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Liz1967

What makes me angry is the shortage of midwives is down to money - there are many, many midwives who are qualified but unable to get jobs - how mad is that

You could be right Liz, which is sad enough, but what I thought was that there was a problem getting or retaining qualified midwives as the pay and conditions were so bad, which is probably just as bad!

I live 13 miles from a large midwife-led unit. I have nothing but praise for that place, it was a wonderful place to be and I felt happy and safe - and this from someone who originally wanted a home birth. If this proposal meant this kind of facility could be replicated everywhere, that would be fantastic. What a shame that what we will get, as ever, is a dilution of service so that some accountant gets the boxes ticked but we all get a worse service.

Hasn't anyone up there realised that our children need the best?

Janice
xx

[Bunyip]

Hey, this was a duplicate of the above post. Did you realise you could post the same thing twice if you accidently click twice because your thumb got caught under the keyboard?!