Pregnancy, giving birth and those first few days with a new born baby should be the most magical moment of most family’s lives. Unfortunately, in Tooting it is for many people an experience blighted by the poor quality of our local maternity service provided at St George’s Hospital.
- Average time between first making contact and booking appointment
- % Women offered an informed choice for screening tests
- Appropriate involvement of obstetricians and midwives in antenatal care
- Women not receiving NICE recommended number of antenatal appointments
- Availability of NICE recommended screening
- Appropriate use of caesarean sections
- Maternal Morbidity
- Postnatal care of women and babies
- Extent that staff are trained in core maternity skills
- Choice and continuity for antenatal care
- Extent of choice in labour
- Support for infant feeding
- Quality of support in caring for the baby after discharge
- % women who considered their length of stay was about right
- Women’s view of cleanliness of delivery and postnatal areas
- Average cost per delivery
It appears that the first cause of the problem lies in the overwork of our local midwives. This was caused by the Government not recruiting enough new midwives. The Conservatives will reverse this policy.
It appears that the second cause of the problem lies in the lack of training provided for midwives by St George’s Hospital. This lack of training is due to the training cuts that St George’s managers have imposed on St George’s due to the severe debt that St George’s has. The Conservatives will stop the feast and famine approach to NHS funding to give the NHS real financial stability.
But there will be lots of areas where we can improve our St George’s local practices. We need to do better. So Mark is asking all women who are pregnant or who have given birth at St George’s to share with him their experiences of local maternity care. Please email him with your stories (good and bad) so that he can help build up a profile of what areas St George’s needs to do better in. Please email him on mark@markclarke.net.