Charities say urgent maternity training is needed in the North East to help save babies' lives

Charities say there are avoidable baby deaths and injuries happening in the North East that could be prevented with proper training.

New research shows just 1 in 8 trusts here have provided the full NHS recommended training for maternity wards.

Mind the Gap: An Investigation into the Maternity Training Gap Between NHS Trusts in the UK was compiled by Baby Lifeline to provide an overall picture of maternity training in the NHS.

The report reviews the extent to which existing guidance and recommendations on maternity training are being followed by NHS Trusts, in the light of government ambitions to halve stillbirths, neonatal deaths and harm by 2025.

The NHS currently spends more than £2.1 billion on maternity-related clinical negligence claims (2017-18 figures), compared with the £1.9 billion per year that is spent on delivering babies.

The Mind the Gap report notes that most baby deaths and injuries (between 76-79 per cent) investigated by national bodies are avoidable with different care, and that training of frontline staff can have a significant impact in reducing this amount. It references the positive impact of high quality training on saving lives, but found that maternity training spending varied widely from £1,051.66 annually at one NHS Trust to £372,878.00 in another (July 2017-July 2018).

The figures were gathered by Baby Lifeline through a Freedom of Information request sent to all NHS Trusts in the UK, in July 2018.

There are around 665,000 babies born in England each year, but despite falling to its lowest rate in 20 years, there are around 3,000 stillbirths, with one in every 200 babies stillborn.

Guidance on tackling stillbirths, first published in 2016 is known as the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle, and advises intervening to reduce cigarette smoking, detecting small babies, informing women about reduced fetal movements and improving monitoring during labour.

NHS England said it can prevent over 600 stillbirths a year, when properly adopted by all Trusts.

But figures published in Mind the Gap, reveal that only 7.9 per cent of the UK’s NHS Trusts have adopted the training guidance within the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle. It is calling for the guidance to be mandatory and to be rolled out across the UK.

Judy Ledger, the Founder of Baby Lifeline who lost three babies during pregnancy and childbirth, said:

“Time and again the importance of training is highlighted in national reports on neonatal deaths and maternity injuries. Mothers and babies are still needlessly dying, or suffering serious injury, because of a lack of relevant training in the NHS. The Government simply won’t achieve its target of halving stillbirths, neonatal deaths, and reducing harm by 2025 without mandating staff training, and properly funding it.

“Our report shows that the one-off £8.1 million in funding the Government gave to Trusts for maternity training in 2017 has had an impact, but it was a drop in the ocean. At the very least, the reduction of one negligence case through proper training would be a life and money saved."

Dr William Parry-Smith, a Registrar Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in the West Midlands Deanery and Trustee of Baby Lifeline, said:

“That the NHS is paying more in obstetric clinical negligence than on delivering babies is nothing short of a national scandal. We’re calling for this to change, and for training to be standardised, mandated and properly funded. 15 babies are stillborn every day or die in their first 28 days of life, and with proper training this doesn’t have to be the case."

“Baby Lifeline’s report shows that there are still unacceptable variations in training that staff receive and there’s no consistency in Trusts’ spending. The focus needs to be on ensuring maternity staff across the country are consistently given the opportunities they need to be prepared to save lives. The evidence is clear: with whole teams properly trained, the number of stillbirths, neonatal deaths and severe brain injuries can be halved. And that’s just the start of what we should be achieving."