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Madeleine Murphy Editor EDITORIAL BOARD Professor Dame Tina Lavender, Professor of Midwifery and Director of the Centre for Global Women’s Health at the University of Manchester Yana Richens OBE, Professional Global Advisor at Royal College of Midwives and Consultant Midwife at University College of London Hospital Karen Barker, Senior Lecturer Midwifery, University of Salford Lesley Briscoe, Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire Corina Casey-Hardman, Head of Midwifery, Halton Midwifery Services, Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust Elinor Clarke, Senior Lecturer (Midwifery), Coventry University Jonathan Cliffe, Registered Midwife, Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Tracey Cooper, Consultant Midwife in Normal Midwifery, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, Head of Maternity, Children & Young People for NHS England Julie Jomeen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean: Research and Scholarship, Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Hull Kevin Hugill, Senior Nurse Educator – NICU, Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar Paul Lewis OBE, FRCM, Professor of Midwifery, Bournemouth University Patrick O’Brien, Consultant Obstetrician, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health, University College London Hospitals, London Jessica Read, Local Supervising Authority Midwifery Officer for London Gillian Smith MBE, Director RCM Scotland Catherine Warwick CBE, General Secretary of the Royal College of Midwives Sian Warriner, Consultant Midwife, John Radcliffe Hospital Zita West, Clinical Director, Zita West Clinic Ltd Ltd Ltd Healthcare Healthcare MA MA 2016 2016 © © The British Journal of Midwifery aims to provide midwives, students and maternity services professionals with accessible, original clinical practice and research articles, while also providing summaries of high-quality research evidence, promoting evidence-based practice. EDITORIAL Whatever happened to safety in numbers? England is a safe place to have a baby. So says secretary of state for health Jeremy  Hunt, in the f oreword to the new report from the Department of Health’s (DH, 2016) Maternity Safety Programme Team. But it could, of course, be safer, hence the report’s catchy title: Safer Maternity Care. With the ambition of halving the rate of perinatal deaths by 2030 and reducing maternal morbidity and mortality, the plan is split into five key areas of focus: leadership, learning and best practice, teams, data, and innovation. Actions include the production of new resources for maternity teams, learning and development plans implemented for the entire multidisciplinary team, and tracking maternity services’ outcomes using national indicators. These all sound like excellent ideas. Anything that improves efficiency and quality of care in maternity services, focusing on safety and leading to better outcomes for women and babies, is surely a good thing. But the report fails to address one of the most crucial issues currently facing midwifery in the UK: there are not enough midwives to meet demand. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard eminent figures in the maternity services lament the shortage of midwives. We have an increasing birth rate, the profession is facing a ‘retirement time bomb’ (Bonar, 2015: 2), student bursaries have been scrapped, and it is not yet clear whether the many NHS midwives from countries in the EU will be able to remain working here once the Brexit deal has been negotiated. All of these factors point to a reduction in the number of midwives alongside an increase in demand—and we already have a shortage of 3500 midwives in England alone. Clearly, these numbers don’t add up. The new report doesn’t totally ignore this issue. ‘We also recognise the importance of appropriate staffing levels,’ it says. Thank goodness for that. But there’s more: ‘Health Education England’s forecasts of future supply indicate that we are training more people to enter the workforce as qualified midwives and obstetric and gynaecology CCT-holders than we forecast will leave the system’ (DH, 2016: 19). This doesn’t tally with figures from the Royal College of Midwives (RCM)—unless, of course, the shortage of midwives is being offset by obstetricians and gynaecologists in these forecasts. If this is the case, what might that mean for the future of maternity services? What about all the evidence that midwife-led care is the safest option for most women (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2014)? The RCM’s (2016) Why midwives leave report highlighted that workforce issues are foremost in the minds of those intending to leave midwifery: 62% said they were not happy about staffing levels in their workplace, 52% said they were not satisfied with the quality of care they were able to provide, and 46% said the excessive workload was a key motivation for leaving the profession. It’s difficult to see how any of these problems will be solved unless a commitment is made to boost the number of people entering the midwifery workforce. New resources and targeted training are great steps towards improving maternity care, both in England and across the UK. But unless we address the core issue of workforce numbers, it all feels a bit half-hearted. After all, for a job to be done well— and safely—there has to be someone actually doing that job. BJM Bonar S (2015) State of Maternity Services Report 2015. RCM, London Department of Health (2016) Safer Maternity Care: Next steps towards the national maternity ambition. http://tinyurl.com/SafMatCare16 (accessed 26 October 2016) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2014) Intrapartum care for healthy women and babies. www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg190 (accessed 26 October 2016) Royal College of Midwives (2016) Why midwives leave – revisited. RCM, London British Journal of Midwifery • November 2016 • Vol 24, No 11 757

Madeleine Murphy Editor

EDITORIAL BOARD Professor Dame Tina Lavender, Professor of Midwifery and Director of the Centre for Global Women’s Health at the University of Manchester Yana Richens OBE, Professional Global Advisor at Royal College of Midwives and Consultant Midwife at University College of London Hospital Karen Barker, Senior Lecturer Midwifery, University of Salford Lesley Briscoe, Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire Corina Casey-Hardman, Head of Midwifery, Halton Midwifery Services, Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust Elinor Clarke, Senior Lecturer (Midwifery), Coventry University Jonathan Cliffe, Registered Midwife, Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Tracey Cooper, Consultant Midwife in Normal Midwifery, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, Head of Maternity, Children & Young People for NHS England Julie Jomeen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean: Research and Scholarship, Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Hull Kevin Hugill, Senior Nurse Educator – NICU, Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar Paul Lewis OBE, FRCM, Professor of Midwifery, Bournemouth University Patrick O’Brien, Consultant Obstetrician, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health, University College London Hospitals, London Jessica Read, Local Supervising Authority Midwifery Officer for London Gillian Smith MBE, Director RCM Scotland Catherine Warwick CBE, General Secretary of the Royal College of Midwives Sian Warriner, Consultant Midwife, John Radcliffe Hospital Zita West, Clinical Director, Zita West Clinic Ltd

Ltd

Ltd

Healthcare

Healthcare

MA

MA

2016

2016

©

©

The British Journal of Midwifery aims to provide midwives, students and maternity services professionals with accessible, original clinical practice and research articles, while also providing summaries of high-quality research evidence, promoting evidence-based practice.

EDITORIAL

Whatever happened to safety in numbers?

England is a safe place to have a baby. So says secretary of state for health Jeremy  Hunt, in the f oreword to the new report from the Department of Health’s (DH, 2016) Maternity Safety Programme Team. But it could, of course, be safer, hence the report’s catchy title: Safer Maternity Care. With the ambition of halving the rate of perinatal deaths by 2030 and reducing maternal morbidity and mortality, the plan is split into five key areas of focus: leadership, learning and best practice, teams, data, and innovation. Actions include the production of new resources for maternity teams, learning and development plans implemented for the entire multidisciplinary team, and tracking maternity services’ outcomes using national indicators. These all sound like excellent ideas. Anything that improves efficiency and quality of care in maternity services, focusing on safety and leading to better outcomes for women and babies, is surely a good thing. But the report fails to address one of the most crucial issues currently facing midwifery in the UK: there are not enough midwives to meet demand.

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard eminent figures in the maternity services lament the shortage of midwives. We have an increasing birth rate, the profession is facing a ‘retirement time bomb’ (Bonar, 2015: 2), student bursaries have been scrapped, and it is not yet clear whether the many NHS midwives from countries in the EU will be able to remain working here once the Brexit deal has been negotiated. All of these factors point to a reduction in the number of midwives alongside an increase in demand—and we already have a shortage of 3500 midwives in England alone. Clearly, these numbers don’t add up.

The new report doesn’t totally ignore this issue. ‘We also recognise the importance of appropriate staffing levels,’ it says. Thank goodness for that. But there’s more: ‘Health Education England’s forecasts of future supply indicate that we are training more people to enter the workforce as qualified midwives and obstetric and gynaecology CCT-holders than we forecast will leave the system’ (DH, 2016: 19). This doesn’t tally with figures from the Royal College of Midwives (RCM)—unless, of course, the shortage of midwives is being offset by obstetricians and gynaecologists in these forecasts. If this is the case, what might that mean for the future of maternity services? What about all the evidence that midwife-led care is the safest option for most women (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2014)?

The RCM’s (2016) Why midwives leave report highlighted that workforce issues are foremost in the minds of those intending to leave midwifery: 62% said they were not happy about staffing levels in their workplace, 52% said they were not satisfied with the quality of care they were able to provide, and 46% said the excessive workload was a key motivation for leaving the profession. It’s difficult to see how any of these problems will be solved unless a commitment is made to boost the number of people entering the midwifery workforce.

New resources and targeted training are great steps towards improving maternity care, both in England and across the UK. But unless we address the core issue of workforce numbers, it all feels a bit half-hearted. After all, for a job to be done well— and safely—there has to be someone actually doing that job. BJM

Bonar S (2015) State of Maternity Services Report 2015. RCM, London Department of Health (2016) Safer Maternity Care: Next steps towards the national maternity ambition. http://tinyurl.com/SafMatCare16 (accessed 26 October 2016) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2014) Intrapartum care for healthy women and babies. www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg190 (accessed 26 October 2016) Royal College of Midwives (2016) Why midwives leave – revisited. RCM, London

British Journal of Midwifery • November 2016 • Vol 24, No 11

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