Maternity unit shuts for almost a year
Shortage of midwives prompts move
HEALTH: Pontefract Hospital’s maternity unit is set to close for 11 months due to midwife shortages. The long-term fate of the Friarwood Birth Centre has been in doubt for more than a year, with the trust struggling to recruit midwives.
The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust said the unit will close from November 8.
PONTEFRACT HOSPITAL’S maternity unit is set to close for 11 months due to midwife shortages.
The long-term fate of the Friarwood Birth Centre has been in doubt for more than a year, with the trust struggling to recruit midwives.
While 5,700 women give birth at Pinderfields Hospital in nearby Wakefield each year, just 147 did so at Pontefract last year. This is compared to 214 births in 2017.
The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust said the unit will close from November 8 to September 30, but the decision did not preempt discussions about its longterm future.
Pontefract MP Yvette Cooper presented a 1,000-name petition to protect the maternity unit earlier this year, saying mothers should have a choice rather than having to go to “overstretched” Pinderfields.
Ms Cooper, who gave birth to her three children at Pontefract, said families were “paying the price” for Government failures.
She said: “This Government has completely failed for 10 years to recruit enough midwives and they’ve made it even worse by taking the student bursary away so midwives can’t afford to train.
“Mid Yorkshire told us they would keep the Pontefract unit open after over 1,000 local mums and residents signed our petition, and they agreed it was a valuable service. So for us to lose it because of national government failures to get enough midwives is just appalling.”
Martin Barkley, chief executive of The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said the decision was taken on safety grounds.
He said: “Mid Yorkshire, in common with many other trusts, has a number of midwife vacancies, which we struggle to fully recruit to in the context of a national shortage of midwives.
“Despite having been delighted to recruit 15 midwives from the cohort of newly qualified midwives that join the NHS at this time every year, it has not been enough to ensure we have an adequate number of midwives across three midwife-led units and our obstetric service based at Pinderfields Hospital.
“It is, therefore, challenging to consistently provide the excellent standard of service we strive to provide for our mums-to-be; nor is it fair to our staff to continue to stretch our midwifery resource so thinly.”
Mr Barkley said the decision would be reviewed next year.
THE IMPORTANCE of patient safety explains, and justifies to a lesser extent, the decision of health chiefs to close Pontefract’s midwife-led maternity unit for at least 11 months.
Citing staff shortages, the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust says the welfare needs of expectant mothers, and their newborn babies, can be met at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield.
But this does not excuse the abruptness of the decision – Friarwood Birth Centre will be ‘mothballed’ on November 8 and this will cause consternation to many mothers-to-be.
And while health services have become more centralised – 5,700 women give birth each year at Pinderfields compared to 200 at Pontefract – community provision is integral to the NHS.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the Friarwood facility will reopen on September 30 next year – Yorkshire’s NHS trusts are not alone in struggling to recruit sufficient nurses, doctors and also midwifes to meet the needs of their patients.
This also pertains to the General Election, which will now be staged on December 12, as the main parties prepare to reveal their headline commitments to voters.
For, while Boris Johnson appears more confident on health policy than his predecessors as Tory leader as he announces various hospital building and rebuilding plans, he needs to remember that they also require staff and the NHS has struggled for many years to train, recruit and retain sufficient medics to keep up with demand. As such, the PM – and his rivals – are even more duty-bound, in light of the Pontefract announcement, to explain how they will staff the NHS.