Northampton: Maternity unit needs 37 more midwives

Northampton General Hospital agreed to an NHS "diagnostic assessment" over its maternity services

A criticised maternity service needs 37 more midwives, about a fifth of its total midwifery workforce.

The care regulator has said Northampton General Hospital did not always have enough qualified and experienced staff to keep women safe from avoidable harm.

Figures obtained by the BBC show that 49 serious incidents have occurred in its maternity services in four years.

The hospital said it had undertaken "a lot of work" in the past 18 months and a recruitment process was under way.

On Friday, the Care Quality Commission published a report following an inspection of the service, rating it as requiring improvement.

According to a Freedom of Information Act response, between November 2018 and November 2022, the hospital had 278 serious incidents, with the highest level coming across maternity services, including gynaecology and obstetrics.

There are currently 37 vacancies for midwives

The trust spokeswoman said it had "an open culture of reporting and investigating adverse incidents".

"Nationally maternity services have higher numbers of serious incidents, compared to other departments in any acute hospital trust, due to certain triggers that result in a serious incident being declared," they added.

There are currently 37 vacancies for midwives but the trust said it manages staffing levels "closely and ensure that all shifts are covered by bank or midwives working altered shift patterns, to ensure that we are able to provide a safe maternity experience".

The hospital has a midwifery manager on call 24 hours a day, aiming to give an oversight of staffing and activity.

The trust, which said it has an active recruitment process, said it was also seeing an increase in complex cases.

The spokeswoman said: "The continuous improvement of our maternity services is an area of great focus for our hospital chief executive and hospital trust board.

"Over the past 18 months a lot of work has been undertaken to improve our maternity services and good progress has been made, including strengthening the senior leadership team in the unit, greater monitoring and proactive recruitment of maternity support workers, midwives and international midwives.

"We receive a large number of very positive comments from parents about their experience at [our] maternity unit.

"We would like to reassure our expectant parents that we have robust processes in place to manage staffing levels to ensure that every shift is covered."