North Devon expectant mothers are on their own as of today.

JenniRen I know someone who trained at the Peninsula Medical School. They didn't choose to work in Devon once trained. Back when it opened it was said people who trained here would want to stay in the area but recruitment doesn't seem to have improved. I think it's even worse for dentists than doctors, in the years I've lived here I've never been able to get an NHS dentist.

Oh dear.

Mind you, I think that's the same in many places. They have all gone private. We pay Denplan but it doesn't give much discount.

I wouldn't want to work in Devon after medical training, it's nearly all old people care.
(Joke). (But true).

JenniRen

butterandjam

Fleur20

Mothers to be, in labour, travel for 3 hours from the north of Scotland , Wick, to Raigmore hospital in Inverness.. not a competition, but a fact...

Pregnant women on the Scottish Islands often have to travel to the mainland and stay there, * ahead of their due date*, to make sure they are within reach of the maternity services for c-section , neonatal resus, etc. ( emergency helicopter transfers can't be relied on as they are subject to weather conditions / deployment elsewhere) .

Is that because the hospital that served them closed down or reduced the services?
Or was it always like that?

theworriedwell, my brother-in-law has had very good experience of the Peninsula Medical School.

Soem islands neber had a hospital. some have only a "cottage hospital" . An example

www.neonataltransport.scot.nhs.uk/hospitals/rural-and-remote-hospitals/remote-and-rural-hospitals-by-name-of-townarea/uist-and-barra-hospital-benbecula/

A cottage hospital on Benbecula serving the islands of Barra and the Uists. <3 deliveried a year- mostly unexpected deliveries as most travel off the Island for delivery.

Responsible Unit
Raigmore Hospital, Inverness or Western Isles Hospital, Lewis

Staff
1 midwife working Monday to Friday 9-5.
Medical support is from the local GPs on call.

Unit facilities
Incubator: No
Resuscitaire: Yes, with T piece
Saturation Monitor: Yes
Air/Oxygen availability: O2 cylinders
X rays: Just daytime
Blood gases: No
Blood sugars: Yes
Infusion pumps: Yes
Phototherapy: No

One time I went to Barra (5 hour sea crossing ) the ferry captain made an announcement to "welcome home from the hospital" a Barra mother and baby.

Caught short, she had given birth on board the ferry on the outward trip some days earlier.

LizzieDrip

I would make nurses training fully funded so they don’t end up in debt.

I would offer a financial incentive to qualified nurses who’ve left the profession to encourage them to return, particularly in areas of need.

I’d start doing this now!

Most qualified nurses would not be likely to return to the profession. I had coffee with two old schoolfriends yesterday, one was a retired nurse, the other retired social worker. The nurse said she had met up with 2 other retired nurses last week and they had both gone back to very part time nursing jobs in the NHS but left very quickly. They said the standard of nurses coming through now shocked them and they report lack of empathy, poor communication with patients and cutting corners wherever they can.

Excuse my ignorance but what happened to midwives? Or did they all go out with the last episode of Call the Midwife? I suppose modern regulations demand a senior consultant on call because of difficulties.

A state Registered Midwife is a stand alone qualification- just as a Registered Nurse (RN) is also a stand alone qualification with different specialisms eg. also standalone qualifications e.g. eg General nursing- RGN, Mental Health nursing - RNMH, Learning Disabilities nursing- RNLD.

Once a Registered Nurseor Midwife secures their first qualification in their initial specialism, e.g. an RM, RGN, RMHN, RNLD, they can apply for an additional, yet somewhat shortened course to secure a second specialism qualification thus becoming dual registered- that is on 2 parts of the Nursing and Midwifery Council Register.

No Midwives have not disappeared- we just don't have enough of them and many feel a certain lack of support after recent Midwifery Care scandals that have highlighted unsafe staffing levels.

Midwifery care is a high risk environment- both for baby and mother so it is understandable that if staffing levels are not safe and the inherent service risk increase- health care trust will act conservatively.

It's not just Devon. Some places in Scotland have to travel further. Maternity Services seem to be one of the first things to go.

I saw this on local TV last night and thought what would I have done. I decided I would get an Airbnb or BnB in Exeter around 10 days to 2 weeks before my due date to ensure being nearer the hospital. Yes it's expensive but I would get a loan, credit card, borrow from family or friends any way I could to be sure my baby arrived safely.
You need a consultant obstetrician, anaesthetist and paediatric consultant in some cases with complicated deliveries. My friend's daughter had a prolapse and haemorrhage during a recent delivery so just a midwife wouldn't have been enough to save her.

M0nica

If I had had a 90 minute drive DD would have been born in the car.

So would younger so ! We barely made it to the hospital anyway.

A friend’s daughter gave up her midwifery course with six weeks to go. She felt the training wasn’t sufficient.

sazz1

I saw this on local TV last night and thought what would I have done. I decided I would get an Airbnb or BnB in Exeter around 10 days to 2 weeks before my due date to ensure being nearer the hospital. Yes it's expensive but I would get a loan, credit card, borrow from family or friends any way I could to be sure my baby arrived safely.
You need a consultant obstetrician, anaesthetist and paediatric consultant in some cases with complicated deliveries. My friend's daughter had a prolapse and haemorrhage during a recent delivery so just a midwife wouldn't have been enough to save her.

But firstly, you shouldn't have to be forced into doing that and not everyone could afford it.
Secondly, what if this is a second, third, fourth baby? Do you decamp en famille to Exeter, take older children out of school, all added expense? Can the father, assuming there is one, take this extra time off work?

It should not be necessary.
Most births are fairly straightforward but the fact remains that, generally, maternity services in this country are inadequate.

Correct! Half a Brain!!!
Just wrong to be that far from maternity hospital.

I would allow all the drs & nurses arriving in the country on the boats a chance to work if it’s got to a crisis stage- no I am not joking!

When was it decided that all births should be in hospital and not in maternity homes staffed by nurses and midwives, with a GP on call to come in and do the stitching, if necessary? Or an experienced sister to realise that more specialised help was in fact needed and the mother-to-be blue-lighted to hospital?

Was it less safe in those days?

It was certainly a much more pleasant experience in a maternity home than hospital in my experience.

These are the concerns from expectant mums in the area:

Planning how to get to the hospital, not everyone has a car
Transport costs, £100+ each way by taxi
Parking costs
Accommodation needs, nearest hotels £100 a night
Coordinating childcare from a distance whilst you are in labour or in hospital
Mobility or accessibility needs
What to do if there is road disruption and hold ups like in very busy summer months
Etc.

MaizieD

The hospital says it has made the decision because of unsafe staffing levels. It seems to be between a rock and a hard place.

What solution would posters suggest?

Advise any young girl uncertain about a career choice to train as a midwife and when qualified start a private practice!

Advise expectant mothers to invite someone with the knowledge to deliver a baby to come and stay for the last month of the pregnancy. And to discuss with their GP if he or she is willing to be called to a birth that will have to take place at home.

Check what the Highway Code has to say about driving fast with flashing lights and, or emergency flags when taking a woman in labour to hospital.

MT62

I would allow all the drs & nurses arriving in the country on the boats a chance to work if it’s got to a crisis stage- no I am not joking!

& dentists

MT62

I would allow all the drs & nurses arriving in the country on the boats a chance to work if it’s got to a crisis stage- no I am not joking!

Is that tongue in cheek? 🤔. People who arrive on boats destroy all personal papers so that wouldn’t be a feasible solution.

My medic dd won’t work in Obstetrics now, she feels it is so unsafe. The quality of a good proportion of the standalone midwives is appalling, they’re unskilled in knowing when to call in the cavalry. They don’t get training in non-pregnancy related conditions so whenever a woman presents with unusual symptoms, they miss serious conditions because they try to fit everything into a pregnancy framework. There is also a real issue with relationships between the midwifery and obstetrics teams with neither really trusting the other.

Part of the reason for the low staffing levels is because there are so many doctors and midwives unwilling to put their careers on the line to work in these tinder box areas where they may well end up court. And who can blame them? My dd reckons it will only get worse as the old school midwives who previous trained as nurses come up to retirement and leave the profession.

I don’t know how you ‘mend’ this situation, I really don’t.

I know it’s not a competition, the level of service nationwide is appalling, but people living in some areas of Northumberland have had to travel 90 minutes to the nearest maternity department for many years. It’s 1 hour 25 minutes from somewhere in the west like Keilder Village, to the nearest A and E department too.

To be fair I live in county Durham so know kielder very well, and adore it, but it is by its nature a very isolated place, I do think it us a place where you have to balance the benefits of isolation and the downsides.

SueDonim, yes, I thought that was the case but have no direct experience now so did not like to post that.

Someone in our family (not in touch with her now) started training as a midwife a few years ago, not a nurse and no nursing experience at all. I thought at the time that midwifery should have been a specialist subject after nursing training.

The point of the OP, I think, is that midwifery and obstetric services were available in this area previously but have now closed down and these services have been centralised a long distance away.

If someone chooses to live in a remote area away from such services, they will take that into consideration when they choose to live there, but to have these services removed is quite a different matter.

It's not the only area where this is happening and not just midwifery and obstetrics. A&E and Minor Injuries are being closed so people in urgent need of treatment have to travel for some time to receive treatment.

All in the name of progress?