Midwife shortage ‘critical’

Auckland DHB among areas worst affected as professional body agitates for action

Midwives have appealed to the Government to urgently deal with a “crisis” in their sector which they say has left pregnant women struggling to get care.

Auckland, Tauranga, Canterbury and parts of the Waikato are among the areas understood to be suffering.

Immigration New Zealand added midwives to the “immediate skill shortage” list in December.

The New Zealand College of Midwives is blaming years of underfunding of the service, with midwives’ pay failing to keep pace with inflation.

Canterbury DHB experienced a particularly severe shortage in December, with more than 140 women unable to find a midwife to act as their lead maternity carer over the Christmas period.

The latest DHB board meeting agenda noted that the local Midwife Resource Centre allocated midwives to more than half the women, with on-call midwives caring for 50 who could not get continuous care from one midwife.

Most DHBs were unable to provide figures on midwife shortages at short notice.

The college said it had warned the previous Government over many years that pay for community midwives was failing to keep pace with inflation. Understaffing was undermining morale in hospitals and maternity units, it said.

“We are hearing an increasing number of stories from around the country of severe shortages as midwives continue to leave,” chief executive Karen Guilliland said. “We can now see a pattern confirming that this is a service in crisis.”

The college’s midwifery adviser, Alison Eddy, said Auckland DHB had a “longstanding issue” with recruiting and retaining midwives. “This is a national issue . . . But this issue seems to be particularly acute for the Auckland DHB and their tertiary hospital.”

The college was getting an increasing number of queries from midwives raising concerns about working conditions, Eddy said.

“There simply aren’t enough midwives, and they’re feeling increasingly stressed and stretched, upset and frustrated that they can’t give the care they want to.”

These concerns had been taken to a board member at Auckland DHB.

A spokeswoman for Auckland DHB said, “We have been working with our union partners and midwifery organisations to provide additional support for our staff. Our aim is to work closely alongside the [college] to ensure midwifery remains an attractive and evolving profession.”

She said they had 146 midwives and had filled many vacancies.

“In the past three months we have had 10 new midwives start with us.

“We also have six experienced midwives at various stages of the recruitment process, and 35 applicants for our graduate midwifery programme (May 2018 intake).

“We are in the process of recruiting to 17 new, additional positions that have been established to further support increasing demand.”

Health Minister David Clark said midwives did a demanding and important job.

“We are fortunate to have highquality midwife services, but I acknowledge that there are workforce pressures in some areas. I’ve asked the Ministry of Health to look at what can be done to address this in both the short and longer term,” Clark said.

The College of Midwives began fighting for pay equity across the country three years ago when it began court action.

Last year the college and the Ministry of Health reached an agreement to design a new funding model for community-based midwives.

That process had been worked on since May 2017, ministry director of service commissioning Jill Lane said, but anyfunding decision was part of the May 17 Budget process and confidential.