Hospital understaffing ‘can cause increased neonatal death risk’

A lack of staff caring for women admitted to hospital to give birth may be leading to a higher-than-necessary risk of neonatal deaths.

This is the view of the Association of Radical Midwives, which has stated that there is currently a “shortage” of midwives in the UK which means that mothers are not receiving the one-to-one care they may require.

Sarah Montagu, administrative secretary for the organisation, said staff should always be on hand to deal with potentially complex cases, which should include working out-of-hours instead of only during the day.

The comments come in response to recent British Medical Journal research which suggested that the number of neonatal deaths occurring from intrapartum anoxia is disproportionately high when delivery takes place out-of-hours.

Ms Montagu said: “People know that there is the possibility of increased risk if you haven’t got the staffing levels. People were always aware of that.”

She added that the problem could be mitigated by implementing a case load midwifery system that sees each member of staff assigned a certain number of women, which can help to avoid individual midwives being overwhelmed in busy periods.