Midwife crisis
The Ministry of Health is set to begin recruiting Australian new graduate midwives to fill acute staff shortages on hospital maternity wards.
The Ministry of Health is set to begin recruiting Australian new graduate midwives to fill acute staff shortages on hospital maternity wards.
The recruitment drive will offer free on-the-job training for up to 26 Australian midwives, beginning in July.
But the College of Midwives is criticising the move, saying freshly trained midwives who have no relevant New Zealand experience should not be staffing wards in the country’s biggest hospitals.
Shortages are most acute in Auckland and Waikato.
At National Women’s Hospital, 12 midwifery positions are waiting to be filled, while Waikato has 13 midwife vacancies.
Women spoken to by Stuff recounted waiting long hours to be attended while in labour.
New mum Aimee Alexander said her son lost 15 per cent of his birth weight overnight as staff were unavailable to help her feed him.
In the morning, she was told he was severely dehydrated.
‘‘I was like: You could have checked on him, you could have told me.
‘‘I just felt so guilty, I felt so responsible,’’ said Alexander, who was at Auckland Women’s in January 2017. ‘‘It felt like: If you’re not bleeding out and your baby is not dying, we don’t have time for this; and you were just left to fend for yourself.
‘I thought: Are they understaffed, or is this an acceptable level of care?’’
New mum Kerry Thomas gave birth to daughter Claire at Waikato Hospital in January.
She said staff were so busy, the women in labour were attending to each other.
‘‘I got the care I needed in the end, but with big delays.
‘‘If they had more staff on and could actually look after people, it would have made a huge difference.’’
Training package
Minister of Health David Clark has approved $140,000 for the development of a training support package for Australian midwives to do the Midwifery First Year of Practice programme.
Health Workforce New Zealand group manager Claire Austin said the package would be offered to all new Australian graduate midwives, who previously had to fund their own training.
‘‘This will provide education, mentoring, supervision and support for them to practise safely in New Zealand district health board midwifery services.’’
Funds would not be taken away from local midwives, as there were not enough New Zealand graduates to fill the programme, she said.
‘‘Our first commitment is to continued growth of our own workforce, particularly Ma¯ ori and Pasifika.
‘‘In the meantime recruitment from overseas is an important option.’’
But College of Midwives chief executive Karen Guilliland said the Auckland District Health Board in particular had struggled with employment and staff issues for years, which overseas midwives would not solve.
‘‘Many [large] hospitals face the same issues but have improved their employer responsibilities.
‘‘Unfortunately, the college predicts that these Australian new grads are unlikely to stay with the Auckland District Health Board either.’’
The college had seen no evidence of any initiatives to address retention, she said.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment added midwives to its Immediate Skill Shortage list in December.