Thousands more doctors and midwives needed for maternity units to be deemed safe

It has emerged that the numbers of doctors employed in maternity units in England will need to be raised by a fifth in order to make wards safer for mothers and babies.

NHS England has demanded hospitals take action to improve the safety of mothers and babies in the wake of the recent damning report into poor care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust.

President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Dr Eddie Morris has said that putting in place all the recommendations would mean a 20 per cent increase in the numbers of obstetricians working in maternity units.

He also warned of the current gaps in rotas for junior doctors, “We know that every single unit in the country has gaps in the rota of the junior doctors and the senior trainees who are delivery service, which I think shows that we do have a significant problem around staffing those rotas.

“When we look at consultant obstetricians, we don’t know yet exactly how many more staff we need, but if we’re going to expand the work that consultants do along the lines of Donna Ockenden’s recommendations, we may well need an expansion in our consultant workforce of somewhere around 20 per cent. Now that would need training and would need considerable efforts to encourage more doctors into the speciality.”

The Royal College of Midwives has also stressed it believes the NHS in England needs at least a further 3,000 midwives.

NHS England’s chief nurse Ruth May, has said “Despite considerable progress having been made in improving maternity safety, there continues to be too much variation in experience and outcomes for women and their families.”

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