Nursing

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I note that I am the only doctor speaking in this debate. Noble Lords are right: doctors do as matrons tell them. Therefore, when my noble friend Lady Emerton—the matron—said to me, “You will speak”, I did not argue, but I am very pleased to be able to do so and I thank her for the opportunity.

As most noble Lords know, during my fruitful life my specialty was maternal foetal medicine. I worked in a team that looked after mothers whose pregnancies were complicated by other medical conditions or who developed serious complications during pregnancy or labour. I pay tribute to the most dedicated nursing workforce with whom I had the privilege to work—midwives and specialist neonatal nurses. They were the key members of the team and prevented not only deaths but handicaps among the babies who were born either prematurely or with difficulties, or whose mothers had a difficult labour. They are the most skilful nurses with whom I have ever worked. I still go to my hospital occasionally. I walk through the labour and delivery room and get the usual comment: “Have you come here to work or to drink our coffee?”. I have the coffee, as I do not think that I would be allowed to work. I am going to talk mostly about the current state of affairs in midwifery and neonatal nursing.

We currently have a shortfall in England of between 4,500 and 5,000 midwives. This is partly because of a fall in recruitment but it is also related to an increase of 22 per cent in the number of live births over the past two years. There are now 690,000 births per year in England. Another problem is that the midwifery workforce is ageing. Half the workforce is aged between 45 and 55, and therefore recruiting a younger workforce is extremely important. Not only that, there is a change in the way in which midwives work. Their work has become more complex because of older mothers. There has been a 71 per cent increase in 40 year-old mothers and a 24 per cent incidence of obesity in pregnancy, both of which lead to higher rates of complications in antenatal care and in labour.

There is also a reduction in the overall budget. In 1997-98, the maternity services budget was 3.1 per cent of the total NHS budget. Although the sum might have gone up in total, it was 2.46 per cent in 2010. There is a serious issue of recruitment of midwives and an increase in maternity services. I know that the Government recognise the problem. Even before the election the Prime Minister, as Leader of the Opposition, writing in the Sun pointed out that midwives were,

“stretched to breaking point … overworked and demoralised”.

He promised that when in power, the Government would increase the number of midwives by 3,000. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

I congratulate the Government on the issue of training. They have committed to maintaining the same number of places for student midwives in the 2011-12 academic year as there were in 2010-11, which was a record high. This is welcome as it will help to address the two issues of the midwifery shortfall and the ageing midwifery profession, provided that there are jobs at the other end of the process. Recruitment ought to be part of it.

Last week the Royal College of Midwives published its State of Maternity Services Report 2011, which makes several good points. The key ones suggest steps to address the problem. One is to increase the choice of place of birth—I know that the Government are keen to allow mothers to have a choice—such as midwifery-led units and home births. Births in these settings require less midwife time, and in low-risk pregnancies outcomes are not affected. Other suggestions include: the appropriate deployment of properly trained and supervised maternity support workers to do non-midwifery tasks; a guarantee not to cut midwife training places; and encouraging the health service to increase recruitment and meet the target of 4,000 more midwifes.

There is clear support for more midwives. A recent public e-petition to Parliament calling for the Government to recruit an extra 5,000 midwives has already been backed by 20,000 people. I hope that after today’s debate it might increase to 2 million. I hope that I have made my point that there is a need to address the midwife shortage if we are to deliver quality care to pregnant mothers and newborns.

I turn briefly to the issue of neonatal nursing. As highlighted in the report published on 9 November by Bliss, a special-care baby charity, one-third of neonatal units in England are cutting their nursing workforce, stopping recruitment or downgrading posts. Referenced against the Department of Health’s toolkit for neonatal services, there is a shortage of nearly 1,200 neonatal nurses. Care of the neonates, both premature and following neonatal surgery, is highly skilled, intensive work, and outcomes for those vulnerable babies, including mortality rates, are directly related to skilled nursing care around the clock. Cuts in training and education budgets have led to a shortage of qualified specialist neonatal nurses. We need commissioners and providers to implement NICE specialist neonatal care quality standards. In future we will rely a lot more on NICE quality standards to drive up quality and outcomes in the health service. If they are not implemented—as they clearly are not, in specialist neonatal care— improvements will not come about.

The Government want a reduction in perinatal and infant mortality. Delivering care to neonatal quality standards will go a long way to achieving that. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on both maternity and neonatal services.