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Maternity services to stay – with close monitoring
Maternity services to stay – with close monitoring
7 January 2008 At a meeting with medical and nursing staff of Gloucester Soldier’s Memorial Hospital today (Monday), Hunter New England Health’s Chief Executive Dr Nigel Lyons said the capacity of the hospital to sustain maternity services is on a ‘knife’s edge’. Dr Lyons called the meeting with maternity services staff, including local doctors, to discuss workforce shortages affecting the service. He praised the existing maternity staff in Gloucester for their passion and commitment to providing a ‘quality service’ to local mothers. "This discussion is in no way a reflection on the dedicated staff who provide the service, but it’s a matter of sustaining the service against a backdrop of workforce shortages and a small number of deliveries," Dr Lyons said. Dr Lyons said the concerns centred on a small number of births in the area, and a declining number of midwives and medical officers to safely perform the deliveries. He said Gloucester Hospital has an average of 16 births per year, with a further 30 mothers having their babies at larger hospitals where there is specialist obstetric care and the back-up of emergency surgical and newborn paediatric care, in the event of complications. "There is currently only one doctor in the area doing deliveries in Gloucester, and she cannot reasonably be expected to be available 365 days a year. This means there will inevitably be gaps in the service available. "We also have a declining number of midwives available. A few years ago we had the equivalent of five full time midwives. Now, we have the equivalent of 2.4 full time equivalent midwives," Dr Lyons said. "While these staff have been creative in implementing an on-call roster system so that a midwife can be called in when needed, this may not be sustainable in the long term. We will regularly need to review the commitment to these arrangements," Dr Lyons said. At this stage, Dr Lyons says the maternity service will stay, but added that patient care would be compromised if there was a further decline in medical or midwifery numbers, or an inability to meet training requirements.. "If we say we are providing a full-time maternity service, then we have to meet very high standards such as exposure to a wide range of births each year, inductions, resuscitation and other emergency treatment. "I am pleased that Gloucester maternity staff have expressed a commitment to undertake this additional training and take part in rotations in the larger maternity hospitals," Dr Lyons said. Following the staff meeting, Dr Lyons together with Lower Mid North Coast Cluster Manager Ken Hampson and Gloucester Health Service Manager Peter Barber, met with Gloucester Mayor Julie Lyford and General Manager Norm McLeod to inform them of the direction the Health Service is taking. "We agree that we have some work to do to ensure that we can maintain adequate numbers of midwives and midwifery skills and we are all keen to see this happen ," Dr Lyons said. Mr Hampson and Mr Barber have offered to meet with Council on a three-monthly basis to provide ongoing updates on the issue, which was warmly received by Mrs Lyford, who has invited them to speak at Council’s February meeting.
Contact: Kay Cope
Phone: 6776 9817
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