Brain injuries in babies to be reduced in new drive to avoid birthing complications, announces maternity safety minister Nadine Dorries
Today (4 July), maternity safety minister Nadine Dorries is announcing £2.45 million funding which will benefit NHS maternity staff and improve the safety of the women and babies they care for.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is awarding the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) almost £2 million to lead the first phase of the Avoiding Brain injuries in Childbirth (ABC) Collaboration.
This funding will be used to survey maternity staff and parents and test out best practices for monitoring and responding to a baby’s wellbeing during labour. It will also focus on managing complications with a baby’s positioning during caesarean section to reduce brain injuries.
Maternity safety minister Nadine Dorries said:
Due to be carried out by the end of this year, the ABC review aims to develop a nationally agreed approach for how staff monitor the condition of a baby during labour by:
The review will be carried out through a partnership with the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute at the University of Cambridge and the RCOG.
The 3 organisations will aim to agree the best clinical practice for managing deteriorating conditions of babies during labour and test how this could be rolled out across maternity services in England in future.
The DHSC has also provided almost £450,000 to the RCOG to develop a new workforce planning tool to improve how maternity units calculate their medical staffing requirements, to better support families and babies.
Over the next year, RCOG will collaborate with and gather data from the health sector, determining how the tool can help NHS Trusts to understand their own medical staffing needs, and provide standardised, safe and personalised care tailored to their communities.
Due to be freely available to NHS Trusts across the country next year, the tool will aim to:
Dr Edward Morris, President at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said:
Gill Walton Chief Executive at The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said:
Chief Midwifery Officer for England, Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, said:
The government’s maternity safety ambition is to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirth, neonatal and maternal death and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 2025.
While good progress has been made in reducing the mortality elements of the ambition, the brain injury rate has fallen to 4.2 per 1,000 live births in 2019, since rising from 4.2 to 4.7 per 1,000 live births between 2012 and 2014.
Several independent inquiries into maternity safety, most recently the Ockenden Report, have highlighted the need to gain a deeper understanding of what constitutes safe staffing in maternity care. Rota gaps are reported by 90% of obstetric and gynaecology junior doctors in their units, and attrition and burnout rates are high at all career stages.