Midwifery failure of care

A Care Quality Commission survey of 23,000 women who gave birth in England in February revealed significant dissatisfaction, and sometimes anger and anguish. One in four said they were left alone by midwives or doctors during or after labour or birth. In all 13% had been left alone in early labour, 9% in the later stages, 2% during the birth and 9% shortly after.

Some were forced to give birth on the floor in waiting rooms, having earlier been told not to come in as they were not in enough pain.

Other women said they felt "lonely, helpless and uncared for" after being made to wait two hours for morphine following a caesarean.

And many said they went on to feel that staff ‘bullied them’ into breastfeeding their babies.

The NHS’s chief inspector of hospitals Professor Sir Mike Richards, who oversaw the survey, said some cases were ‘shocking’.

He added that failings in maternity wards were turning ‘what should be the most joyous experience of a woman’s life into one of the most frightening’.

The survey found that 25 per cent of women felt anxious because they were left alone at some point during their labour, up from 22 per cent since the survey was last undertaken in 2010.

The survey also found that 26 per cent of women could not always contact midwives when they needed to during the pregnancy and a fifth didn’t think they listened to them.

Nearly one in ten new mothers reported filthy toilets, and 41 per cent said they weren’t given enough help breastfeeding.