Staff shortages are key contributor to baby deaths, investigation finds

Staffing shortages play a key role in unsafe maternity care, an analysis of 92 cases by the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations (MNSI) programme has found.1The 92 pregnant women studied had been allocated to give birth in midwifery units, intended for those deemed low risk, but had to be transferred to hospital because they or their babies needed additional care. Thirty of the babies died—19 during labour and 11 during the first six days of life—and 62 babies required therapeutic cooling for potential brain injury.As well as insufficient staff numbers, difficulties in monitoring babies’ heart rate also played a role in poor care and were affected by the staff shortages, MNSI’s national learning report found. “The mismatch between demand and capacity frequently led to delays in care and/or safety-critical monitoring tasks during labour,” it noted.A third reason for cases going wrong was a failure in organisation or processes. Of the…
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