NHS maternity services in meltdown: A former midwife reveals how understaffed wa

[SVPete]

NHS maternity services in meltdown: A former midwife reveals how understaffed wards are sinking into chaos
By Verena Burns
DailyMail.co.uk
Last updated at 8:39 AM on 16th December 2009

Welcome to the modern NHS maternity ward. A world of shoddy practice, poor hygiene standards and a shocking disregard for patients' individual needs.

When I read about newly qualified midwife Theresa Naish, who hanged herself in January after a premature baby died on her shift, I couldn't help wondering if she, too, was a victim of the over-worked and under-resourced labour wards I have experienced.

Her father Thomas told the inquest into her death: 'Like all NHS staff, she was over-worked, doing too many hours in a department that was understaffed.'

Although the child had little chance of survival, poor Theresa spent weeks torturing herself that she was to blame, before killing herself.

I don't want to alarm people for, of course, the vast majority of babies are born healthy and safe, but I think it's time we admit what is happening in our hospitals.

Maybe articles like this are generated purely by the context of UK health care - and its decline - but there have been so many in the last couple of years that it's almost as if some UK MSM are screaming at US: "Don't do it! This is what you'll get!"

[Baruch Menachem]

Back in 1994 I did a home stay in Russia, and a friend of the family was a doctor at a local hospital.  He gave me a tour.   If that had been a hospital here, the management would all be in jail for what I saw.   Especially in the areas of sanitation and patient protection.  This is just the norm for Government health care.