Birmingham Women’s celebrates International day of the Midwife

At Birmingham Women’s Hospital we are certainly embracing
the theme of this year’s International Day of the Midwife
Campaign which is ‘The World Needs Midwives Now More than Ever!’ by recruiting more midwives to care for our women.

Whilst the official day takes place on the 5th May, we will be hosting our own celebration of this special day on the 7th May. As part of this event, we are delighted that the Chief Nursing Officer for England, Jane Cummings will be visiting our Trust to meet with our Midwives and Midwifery Assistants who provide such an excellent service to thousands of women across Birmingham and the West Midlands.

We have over 300 midwives providing care to more than 8000 women a year, both in hospital and the community. We are committed to making sure we meet the recommended ratio of midwives to births this year and have invested heavily in increasing the number of midwives this year and will continue to recruit and develop our staff until this is achieved.

We will be increasing the number of midwives this year by 13 midwives. We also be working to further develop our midwifery support workers to ensure our midwives and women are supported through their care with us.

Last year we invested over £3million in Maternity services to refurbish and re-design our new Assessment and Birthing Centre. Our new facilities have enabled women to be cared for in the most appropriate place as well as allowing us to increase births to 8000. More recently we secured further funding to further improve the birthing environment for women and their partners, this could not have been possible without the midwives and the women working together.

Director of Nursing and Midwifery, Helen Young commented, “We have much to celebrate and it will be fantastic to show Jane Cummings some of our initiatives which demonstrate that we have listened to the women we care for and are improving their maternity experience. The Trust is committed to the Chief Nurses principles of the 6 Cs: Care, Compassion, Courage, Commitment, Communication and Courtesy. In light of the Francis Inquiry, we are all very aware of the recommendations of the report and we have recently launched our Nursing and Midwifery Strategy which is based on the guiding principles of the 6 C’s.”