In the Guardian today, the above with notably no speech marks around ‘doom loop’, and:
The NHS Alliance has announced that up to 20 of the country’s 155 smaller, consultant-led maternity units, mostly in rural or coastal areas, might have to close, since their safety is in question. The problem – which will seem very pressing and obvious to anyone about to give birth, yet quite abstract and manageable to anyone who isn’t – is that those areas aren’t teeming with alternatives. There are women in Devon whose maternity hospital has been temporarily closed, whose next nearest hospital is 53 miles away. Do they even encourage people to write a birthing plan any more? Because nobody’s, surely, would start: “First, I’d like to spend 90 minutes in a car, yelling at my birthing partner.”
The headline reason is that caesarean sections have risen dramatically, which makes staffing needs more intense. Last year, 45% of births in England were by C-section, 44% were natural vaginal births and 11% were by ventouse or forceps, which marked the first time C-sections have been the most common method of delivery. Both elective and emergency C-sections hit their highest levels ever. This is often broadly ascribed to more complex pregnancies – older mothers, more existing health conditions – but one midwifery professor, Soo Downe, said that women “don’t really believe they’re going to have the kind of support they need to have a safe, straightforward, positive labour and birth in hospital”.
Imagine that was in Scotland? How much would BBC Scotland’s ‘Health Correspondent’ Lisa Summers love to say that. It would top her previous best in 2020 when she said NHS Tayside’s Oncology Department was ‘dysfunctional’ even though no one other than her wee self had used the word.
How are things in Scotland?
No matter how they try Scotland is not having England’s maternity crisis – It’s just a review
BBC Scotland’s Lisa Summers trying to keep up the exaggerated image of the significance of Scotland’s National Maternity Review interviewing the Chair, Professor Christine McCourt and claiming that the review came ‘after’ the BBC Disclosure series discovered a series of safety failings.
As with the other Reporting Scotland story today on violent crime, their piece on the Maternity ‘Review‘ is a desparate attempt to give NHS Scotland one of these:
A rapid national investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal services has been ordered by Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting. This is to provide truth and accountability for impacted families and drive urgent improvements to care and safety, addressing systemic problems dating back over 15 years.
This government inherited a situation where issues in maternity and neonatal care had been ongoing for some time and a series of independent reviews into local trusts had found similar failings in compassionate care – including the failure to listen to women, concerns over safety and issues with leadership and culture.
The investigation will urgently look at worst-performing services in the country but also across the entire maternity system, bringing together the findings of past reviews into one clear national set of actions to ensure every woman and baby receives safe, high-quality and compassionate care.
Crucially, it will be co-produced with clinicians, experts and parents all feeding in, following a series of private meetings last week between the Secretary of State and families who have been harmed or bereaved by failures in their care. It will begin its work this summer and report back by December 2025.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-maternity-investigation-launched-to-drive-improvements
Again, we’ve been clarifying this for some time. See these:
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When changes were made to maternity provision in the Highland area, because Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin did not have adequate provision for some emergency cases, which would require some expectant mothers having to go to Aberdeen, rather than say, Inverness., BBC Scotland created a storm in a teacup about mothers having to travel HUNDREDS OF MILES.
There was no real context or perspective about the numbers of women involved or the fact that for many years patients have had air ambulance transport to the larger hospitals in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow for treatment.
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