Tears tell of their fears and frustration

MIDWIVES have been reduced to tears as they have revealed the dangers to mums and babies caused by the shortages in wards.

“Women can end up with quite significant bladder prolapse as well as a cervical prolapses and third or fourthdegree perineal tears because the care was not given to them and that is lifelong for them,” one midwife said of the staff shortage.

“We do try to provide monitoring of the baby, but if the midwife isn’t in the room to listen to the heart rate and monitor that, and something is missed, we know that the outcome of potential brain injury to that baby is very high,” another said.

Some babies with low blood sugar could have died because they were not being properly monitored, multiple midwives who were reduced to tears told News Corp.

At one NSW hospital, a baby had to be resuscitated after it was smothered by its sleeping father in a unit where midwives were working beyond safe capacity staffing levels.

A midwife at a country hospital, also in NSW, said it was now providing only minimum care.

“Two staff and 17 patients, plus then babies on top,” she said. “We have two midwives to six labouring women. We don’t give the best care that we can potentially give. Things get missed, obviously.”

A midwife at a major Sydney hospital said: “I’ve come on to a shift where they’ve been short staffed, and there’s babies that haven’t fed for like 10 or 12 hours because the midwife just hasn’t had a chance to go into that room.”

Queensland midwife Kath Angus posted on Twitter earlier this month before working a 17-hour shift: “I don’t know what’s more dangerous: me working at those levels of fatigue, or a team so understaffed that they can’t carry out safe care.”

Another NSW midwife said: “People working 18-hour shifts, is that is that really safe? The (NSW) Premier just recently had a baby, would he like to know that his wife was being looked after by someone on their 17th hour at work?”