Report urges maternity strategy
A report on maternity wards in Northern Ireland says all trusts should maintain appropriate levels of obstetric, anaesthetic and midwifery cover.
The analysis was carried out by the health watchdog, the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA).
The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said the report revealed flaws in the current system.
Health minister Michael McGimpsey said the report would inform an impending review of maternity services.
An increase in the birth rate in Northern Ireland has meant rising pressure on maternity units.
The report, the latest by the RQIA on how to improve the health service, makes 20 recommendations, including the development of a local maternity strategy.
BBC Northern Ireland health correspondent Marie-Louise Connolly said that some of the other suggestions were obvious, such as auditing services, reviewing processes for the reporting and analysis of incidents and near misses.
Progressive
But our correspondent added that others were progressive, for example, the development of the role of consultant midwives.
Bredagh Hughes from the Royal College of Midwives said the report had been "a long time coming" and had revealed "critical gaps" in the system.
"The most shocking finding for us is the difficulty that the team had in auditing the standard of care and the quality of care and the range of care provided in the trusts," Ms Hughes said.
She added that the RCM believed there should be standards against which care could be benchmarked and that there should be a way of collecting data to measure whether or not those standards were being met.
Mr McGimpsey said sustaining "safe services" was a priority and that the recommendations would form part of the department’s review into maternity services.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
View full post on BBC News | Health | Full Feed