Poole head of midwifery says current site is 'falling apart'

Kerry Taylor, University Hospitals Dorset’s head of midwifery, made the admissions at a recent council meeting, but added “the future looks good” with a move to a much larger new facility at Royal Bournemouth Hospital in two years.

As reported, the NHS trust’s service moved all of its team to the St Mary’s Maternity Hospital in Poole last month having previously been split across the sites in both towns.

This will remain the case until the huge BEACH building at Royal Bournemouth opens at the end of 2024.

Ms Taylor, who joined UHD in April, provided members of BCP Council’s health and adult social care overview and scrutiny committee with an update on the maternity service at a meeting on September 26.

She said in the past year there had been 4,086 births across the service, which equated to 11 a day.

Discussing limitations the team faced, she said national issues with staffing were prevalent before going on to highlight the “struggle” with their existing building’s limitations.

Ms Taylor told the committee: “If you have a chance ever to walk around the Poole maternity site you will see that it is falling apart and ancient and tiny for the volume of ladies that we provide care for.

“We are feeling very excited about the new unit opening.

“There is a lot of excitement and buzz with the staff about moving to a new venue and when we speak to our ladies about it them seem pleased that eventually our services will be nicer.”

Ms Taylor said a review was needed to assess how many midwives the trust needed but at present there was around an 18 per cent vacancy rate although this did not include the 10 new midwives starting in early October. There is an aim to appoint 12 internationally educated midwives into the new year.

She said the move to all being at the Poole site had gone “really, really well”, adding that the benefit was it gave a “really safe and timely service” and united the team.

Cllr L-J Evans, who told the committee she had worked in St Mary’s, said she knew it was quite a “small, pokey” building which was getting “more and more out-of-date”.

She asked what was being done to ensure safety and good experience was maintained.

Ms Taylor said a lot of work had been done to try and make as much space as possible in the waiting area and, while it was early stages, the flow through the department “seemed to be working really well”.

Richard Renaut, UHD's chief strategy and transformation officer, said some building work was carried out to create extra space at the existing maternity unit.

He said an advantage of coming together under one roof was any complications or risk issues could be discussed immediately with senior clinicians.

Mr Renaut said: “Having them together doesn’t just mean we have a more resilient service, but the physical space has been increased cause some of the note stores and admin areas have been converted to clinic space, so there is more space as a result but it is still tiny compared to what we are going to move into in two years’ time which is to properly designed, modern standards.”

Ms Taylor, who has worked as a midwife for 22 years, said the new unit at Bournemouth will allow post-natal ladies to have more space and the offer for partners to stay overnight, which currently cannot be done due to a lack of space.

She said: “The future looks good. It is just challenge trying to get between where we are now and then.

“The staff are so dedicated. We get wonderful letters of compliments and feedback about the service they are offering but they are really doing it in difficult circumstances.”