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when joe*becomes midwifebecause of her long-standing dream of working with women to improve their health care and rights.
But she, like countless others in the industry, now fears the “dangerously long shifts” she is sometimes forced to work put her and her patients’ safety at risk.
Pseudonym Joe explains how community midwifeshe would sometimes work a full day and then be on duty at night.
This means she may be asked to work more than 24 hours to provide vital care to mother and baby.
“It’s not safe and there’s no other profession where you can stay awake, provide care and focus for such long periods of time,” the midwife of 19 years told us independent. “So why do midwives, who have such high responsibilities, do this?
“Such working hours are not safe for midwives or mothers.”
She is one of more than 14,000 people to sign a petition calling for legal limits on midwives’ working hours.
Midwife and author Lead Hazard launched the petition after reading reports that 34-year-old Jennifer Cahill died shortly after giving birth to her second child, Agnes Lily Wren Cahill, at home.
The coroner’s report found “serious failures” in her care contributed to her death and that two midwives during her delivery had been awake for more than 30 hours.
“I know what it’s like as a midwife, working night shifts and not getting enough sleep, but before this I’d been awake all the time, even working all day, and I thought, ‘Oh, this really doesn’t make sense’,” Ms Hazzard said.
“Of course, this affects people’s abilities because it’s well-documented that sleep deprivation can cause similar cognitive impairments to alcohol use. You don’t want anyone caring for you with this level of impairment.”
After sharing the story on social media, she received an “overwhelming” response from more than 100 midwives who shared their experiences of “extremely long” working hours, some of whom had tried to raise concerns within the NHS about how this was affecting care.
“Some of these stories are truly heartbreaking, with midwives and women suffering real harm,” she said.
“Midwives, especially community midwives, are being asked to work full days and then be called in overnight, not just for home births but because of staff shortages within major hospital units. They are often working through the night and some are even expected to work a full day the next day.
“This is inhumane, unsafe and completely unacceptable and stands in stark contrast to other safety-critical and historically male-dominated roles, such as bus and truck driving, rail driving, pilots and air traffic controllers, who have very strict protections over hours worked.”
She called for similar legal restrictions on midwives’ working hours, such as preventing them from working less than 11 hours between shifts.
“This is absolutely transformative for midwives because they suffer really serious physical and mental harm from these shift patterns,” she said.
“The number of stories I’ve received from midwives is staggering, they’ve crashed on the way home from get off work because they were so exhausted, they’ve unintentionally harmed women and babies because they knew they were too tired to work, they’ve asked for a break and been refused.”
She added: “For women and people who have children, it just gives them confidence that the people looking after them are doing a good job, are well rested, are safe and have the support to do the job they were trained to do.”
Midwives are subject to UK working time regulations, which means staff are not allowed to work more than 48 hours a week and are given 11 hours of rest between shifts.
However, midwives say staff shortages, on-call shifts and pressure mean the rules are often ignored.
Some midwives, like Millie*, have been forced to leave the profession entirely due to long hours and stress.
The 33-year-old recalled one shift she worked as a midwife at a bank, and at the end of her shift at 1:30am she was told she couldn’t go home due to lack of staff.
She worked for another eight hours, until 8:30 a.m., having not slept for more than 24 hours.
“That transition pushed me into one of the deepest holes I’ve ever fallen into. I remember getting another IV drip around 6 a.m. and just crashing,” she said.
“It was so hard but you had to keep going because if something happened to that woman, you had to be there. I cried in the closet and had cold water thrown on my face to calm myself down.”
Speaking about the petition, she said she believed restrictions on working hours could make other midwives less likely to leave the profession, adding that it would “reduce the chance of mistakes being made” and “people who use the service will automatically benefit as we will also benefit as we will be safer and better rested.”
The midwives’ comments come amid renewed focus on maternity services, after a damning review earlier this month found women “bleed to excess” in bathrooms and babies suffered avoidable deaths in NHS maternity wards.
Valerie Amos leads National Maternal and Newborn Survey (NMNI)discover the changes in maternity care Although her initial findings were necessary and urgent, progress was “too slow.”
The report highlights some of the issues Baroness Amos said she “hears about all the time”.
These include not listening to women, not getting the right information to make informed choices about their care, and discrimination against women of colour, working-class women, young parents and women with mental health issues.
Royal College of Midwives chief executive Jill Walton said midwives were facing “extreme pressure” and were “burned out, overstretched and working in unsustainable conditions”.
“The fundamental problem is that you cannot provide safe maternity care if your staff are exhausted and overstretched. Well-rested midwives with a manageable workload can provide better and safer care,” she said.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “There are legal limits on working hours to protect staff and their patients from unsafe conditions and any situation where an employer breaches this requirement is unacceptable.”
“The Secretary of State has ordered a rapid, independent inquiry into maternity and newborn services, led by Baroness Amos, to understand deep-rooted problems.
“It will seek to understand the experiences of staff and healthcare professionals working in obstetrics and how they can be better supported to deliver high-quality, safe and compassionate care.”
An NHS spokesperson said: “NHS terms and conditions set out clear requirements around working hours, rest breaks and shift patterns. Trusts should have strong local policies in place to comply with working time regulations and support staff wellbeing.”
You can sign the petition here.