Excessive midwife workloads put newborns at risk: union

A nurses’ union says the health and safety of mothers and their newborns is at risk due to the method of calculating midwifery staff ratios.

QUEENSLAND midwives juggling dangerous workloads are pushing for babies to be counted in patient ratios.

The Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union says newborns are vulnerable as midwives cannot provide the safe, quality standard of care they have been trained for due to an overload of mums and babies to attend to.

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It is not uncommon for one midwife to have 16 mothers and babies in their care in one shift.

In the current system a mother and her baby are considered one person, both in terms of midwifery allocation and health funding.

IT systems are not equipped to count babies in the patient ratios.

QNMU assistant secretary Sandra Eales told The Courier-Mail that while midwife patient ratios vary greatly across Queensland hospital and health services, it is not uncommon for one midwife to have six to eight mothers and the same number of babies in their care at any one time.

“The risks for not counting babies results is unsafe workloads,” she said.

“While the babies are not counted in workloads, those workloads are real and when “missed midwifery care” is associated with a sentinel event such as neonatal death the impact is devastating for the family and extremely distressing for the midwife.

“Midwives may also face coroners court to explain why they failed to observe and rescue a vulnerable being in their care.”

The QNMU highlights that other impacts of “missed midwifery” such as failure to establish breastfeeding due to patient numbers and staff shortages also deliver long-term pain and guilt for individuals and poorer health outcomes for the wider community.

Cooroy woman Renee Butler, with six-month-old Tully, says her midwives were overworked and overstressed. Picture: Lachie Millard

Renee Butler gave birth to baby Tully six months ago at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital.

“I felt a bit sorry for the midwives as they were stressed and rushed,” she said.

“I was in there for a few days so I saw several different shifts come and go.

“I think it would be so much better if midwives had more time to spend with new mums teaching them breastfeeding and preparing them for home.

“Tully is my second child and I educated myself on how to breastfeed.”