Mostly commentating on maternity services in the UK. she/her🗼
Nov 13, 2024 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
The rulings into the conduct of the two Cheltenham birth centre midwives who have been struck off have been published. This is what stands out aside from what has already been reported in the press.🧵
1/17
When Hazel Williams recognised fetal bradycardia in Baby B, she did not use the emergency bell. Instead, she used the simple call bell and sent a maternity care assistant to tell another midwife that an ambulance transfer was needed but without detailing the emergency.
2/
Nov 5, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
In March 2019, Hazel Williams & Lisa Land won @gloshospitals Best Quality Improvement Project for "Implementation of a Continuity of Care model at Aveta Birth Unit, including Antenatal, Intrapartum and Postnatal care" 1/8
This formed part of the 2016 National Maternity Review's vision for services "to become safer, more personalised, kinder, professional, and more family friendly. Every woman should be able to access care centred around her individual needs and circumstances." 2/
Jun 2, 2024 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
What some of us feared would happen is happening. The maternity Independent Working Group (IWG), chaired by RCM+RCOG, in charge of guiding the Maternity Transformation Prog., is partly challenging Bill Kirkup's findings from Reading the signals. 🧵 1/23
In Reading the signals, Kirkup raised the following points about professional conduct at East Kent:
• the unprofessional conduct of some consultant obstetricians
• blaming junior staff for incidents
• distrust & disrespect among & across professional groups
2/
Jan 31, 2024 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
🧵 .@gloshospitals maternity is looking more and more like a stronghold of natural, also called normal, childbirth.
Natural childbirth is an anti-medical movement which promotes non-intervention in pregnancy & childbirth, particularly from doctors.
1/
On Monday, @BBCPanorama investigated four deaths. In three of the deaths, a delay in intervention occured.
In both baby deaths from the Cheltenham birth centre, an ambulance could have been called earlier. 2/ bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod…
Dec 31, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
New job ad. Royal Bournemouth & Poole hospital - Band 6 midwife.
A job ad which at first glance looks unremarkable. But isn't. Let's see why🧵 1/ uhd.nhs.uk/careers/vacanc…
The trust are trying to recruit several midwives on a full or part time basis. A variety of positions are on offer, from community teams to postnatal ward, in view of staffing the new purpose built maternity unit merging Bournemouth & Poole services.
2/
Dec 8, 2023 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
🚨 North Middlesex University maternity. Another truly awful CQC report.
Stillbirth rate
2020 - 3.71/1000
Feb 2023 - 6.82/1000
But no plan to change these outcomes, no learning from incidents and no transparency with affected families. 1/
cqc.org.uk/location/RAPNM
A "closed culture" with hostility between staff when the emergency buzzer is used in escalations.
Delays in starting induction of labour, with one case leading to a stillbirth it seems. 2/
Nov 12, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Another day, another maternity job ad looking for someone
"with demonstrable clinical competencies to help us promote physiological birth"
[For those new to this, 'physiological birth' is the new 'normal birth', see also 'natural birth']
