Maternity service struggles

Palmerston North Hospital’s appointment of registered nurses to fill midwifery vacancies is described by the College of Midwives as a stop-gap that cannot be a long-term solution.

Midcentral District Health Board has been unable to fill three midwifery positions at the hospital, while also gearing up to care for extra mums unable to find community midwives this Christmas.

Healthy women, children and youth clinical executive Jeff Brown said nurses were given one-year temporary contacts as a short-term measure while efforts to recruit midwives in New Zealand and overseas continued.

College of Midwives midwifery adviser Jacqui Anderson said several district health boards had resorted to using nurses to cover midwifery vacancies.

It was not ideal to have nurses with a three-year general qualification working in place of qualified midwives, who had trained for four years in the specialty.

The nurses needed supervision by midwives, which would add to their workload.

Anderson said the problem boards should be dealing with was that midwives felt over worked and under valued, and even if hospitals filled all their positions, there were still not enough of them.

‘‘It’s because midwives are not prepared to continue working for district health boards who do not have adequate fulltime positions.’’

She said midwives working in hospitals and in the community found themselves underpaid and expected to care for too many women and babies, causing stress and loss of morale and declining job satisfaction.

Anderson said there more midwives registered in New Zealand than were working, and district health boards should be looking at what they had to change to attract them back.