Maternity Services

(asked on 12th December 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what guidance his Department has issued on the recommended level of staffing of clinicians for Maternity Units.


Answered by
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
This question was answered on 18th December 2017

Since July 2016, the National Quality Board (NQB) has undertaken to produce a series of sector-specific resources including maternity and neonatal care. These build upon “Supporting NHS providers to deliver the right staff, with the right skills, in the right place at the right time: Safe, sustainable and productive staffing” and adopt the same approach to determining safe staffing levels.

In June 2017 NHS Improvement published a draft improvement resource on behalf of the NQB to help standardise safe, sustainable and productive staffing decisions in maternity services “Safe, sustainable and productive staffing: An improvement resource for maternity services”. NHS Improvement is currently reviewing feedback on this draft resource which will help to shape the final document.

In November 2017, NHS Improvement also published a draft improvement resource to help standardise safe, sustainable and productive staffing decisions in neonatal care “Safe, sustainable and productive staffing: An improvement resource for neonatal care”. The engagement period for this draft resource will run until 22 December 2017.

Providers are expected to follow existing guidance for safe staffing levels.

For maternity services, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published guidance in February 2015 “Safe midwifery staffing for maternity settings”, NICE guideline [NG4].

The document is available at:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng4/chapter/1-Recommendations#setting-the-midwifery-staffing-establishment

For neonatal units, the British Association for Perinatal Medicine has set recommended staffing levels in the third edition of its Service Standards for Hospitals Providing Neonatal Care published in August 2010.

The document is available at:

http://www.nna.org.uk/html/BAPM_Standards_Final_Aug2010.pdf

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