Midwifery facing a “retirement time bomb”

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) have released a new report entitled “The State of Maternity Services Report 2015”.  It warns of un upcoming crisis within midwifery, with increasingly complicated pregnancies and an aging workforce.

There were 661,496 babies born in England last year, almost 100,000 higher than in 2001 and the number of babies born in England and Wales to women in their thirties and forties was up 6859. The report states that based on these figures the country is in need of 2,600 more midwives to be able to cope.  This concern is also exacerbated by what they call  a ‘retirement time bomb’ as the number of midwives in England aged 50 or over has doubled from 4057 in 2001 to 8169 in 2014.

Cathy Warwick, RCM chief executive, said: “Women have every right to give birth later in life, and we support that. But typically older women will require more care during pregnancy, and that means more midwives are needed.  It is deeply frustrating for midwives that they cannot provide the quality of maternity care that they want to deliver because they are so short-staffed…. We must see action now, including protecting or expanding midwifery training numbers and, just as importantly, making sure newly-qualified midwives get jobs in the NHS once they’ve qualified.”

Read the full report here

For an RCM summary see here