North Devon District Hospital has announced it will temporarily close its maternity unit due to lack of doctors – forcing expectant mums to travel long distances
A hospital in the south-west of England will temporarily close its maternity unit leading to safety fears over the long distances expectant mums will have to travel.
North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple normally sees 12,000 babies born each year but will stop deliveries from August 11 – and it is not clear when the maternity unit will re-open.
One pregnant mother who is expecting her third child, said she will have to drive more than an hour-and-a-half to drive to the next nearest hospital – adding she only learned of the planned closure from social media.
Local MP Ian Roome says the closure, coupled with the unique transport situation on the South West Peninsula means mums could face “life-threatening” delays of several hours before getting to the next nearest hospital to give birth in Exeter.
Mr Roome has appealed for a national response so that doctors are parachuted into the hospital to keep its maternity unit open. He told the Mirror: “This is going to put unborn babies’ lives at risk.”
Mr Roome said the planned closure has been triggered by a lack of consultants after one took early retirement and another was signed off sick.
It comes after the maternity unit – which serves a large rural and coastal population with no nearby equivalent maternity unit – has been operating at the limits of safe staffing since last year.
Vanessa Purday, chief medical officer at NDDH, said she could not give a date on when the maternity unit would reopen. She added: “What we can say to our women and families, who are clearly anxious and worried by this decision, we are working hard to reopen as quickly as we can.
“We understand their concerns, we understand their geography, their location, what childcare issues they have, transport risks, and we’ll be putting some wraparound care to make sure we support each woman.”
The trust is contacting pregnant women across the region it serves – including north Devon and north Cornwall which has a lack of main roads and poor public transport – to make birth plans and discuss how they might get to a hospital.
Jenny Henderson, from Parracombe, near Combe Martin, said she learned about the closure on social media while making plans for the birth of her third child.
She is 37 weeks pregnant with a due date on August 18 and her nearest alternative maternity units are in Exeter or Taunton in Somerset – both 90 minutes away.
Jenny said: “Being over an hour-and-a-half away, and this being my third, it’s likely to come quite quickly. I don’t particularly want to be giving birth on the side of the road.”
The number of babies born at the NDDH often rises in summer as the local population is swelled by holidaymakers. It comes after a series of maternity scandals at NHS trusts across the country where short staffing contributed to babies being left brain damaged and sometimes dying during or shortly after birth.
Dr Ian Morris, south west regional chair for the British Medical Association, said: “This decision will undoubtedly cause a lot of worry to pregnant women whose delivery plans have changed last minute, with some potentially facing long journeys to the closest hospital.
“Across the region and indeed the country, we do not have enough consultants to meet the needs of patients or run services to standards that they rightly expect.
“This is due to a combination of failures in workforce planning, a shortage of specialist training places blocking progression, and doctors leaving the NHS because they are being undervalued.
“The shortage leaves gaps in rotas which must be filled, causing doctors to stretch themselves too thinly and risk stress and burnout when they become overworked, potentially putting patient safety at risk when they are not able to work at their best.
“More must be done to ensure safe staffing, including ending recruitment freezes, otherwise more will follow in North Devon District Hospital’s direction.”
Despite the picturesque location popular with tourists, NDDH has traditionally struggled to recruit consultants to live and work in the area.
The trust blames the current staffing crisis on “staff leaving the hospital, staff maternity leave, staff sickness absence and short notice locum unavailability”.
Ms Purday said it was an “enormous decision and one we feel the weight of in our community” but that it could not guarantee that “women would consistently have access to the level of senior medical support during labour they may require”.
She added: “Our teams have worked so hard and held this service together for many months, working extra and longer hours to ensure our families got the care they needed. However, despite our best efforts we cannot staff our medical rota in August.”
Ian Roome, the Lib Dem MP for North Devon, said there are fears the temporary closure of the maternity unit could become permanent. He believes the maternity unit is only short of one full time consultant and two registrars to get it over the safe staffing threshold to remain open.
Mr Roome added: “We need national help from NHS England to get us through this period. This is the most remote hospital in mainland England. It’s not like in London where you can just drive 15 minutes to another hospital.
“In some areas it will now be an hour and a half drive to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital and for someone who is pregnant that could be critical.
“We have some large areas of poverty here and some villages don’t have a bus stop. And the ambulance services around here are already seeing some people wait three to four hours for an emergency.”
Hundreds of people have commented on the planned closure on Facebook where Mr Roome has set up a petition opposing the closure.
Sarah Henshall posted: “An absolutely terrible failure. I had a placental abruption and gave birth to my daughter at NDDH a year ago. Had I been forced to travel the extra distance to Exeter instead both my daughter and I would have died on route.”
Carolyn Hinton said: “What are we? The forgotten ones? Why is the health and safety of our local women and their unborn babies less important than elsewhere in the country?
“There will be road accidents rushing labouring women on a 50 mile journey. Would you want to be that husband behind the wheel or having to cope with a birth at the side of the road? This is a tragedy waiting to happen.”