‘Stress affects almost 50% of England’s midwives’

Nearly half of midwives in England suffered work-related stress in the previous 12 months, according to the latest NHS Staff Survey.

The survey of nearly 300,000 shows a snapshot of staff views in 2015 and has just been published by NHS England.

It finds that stress is a problem for many of the 5268 midwives who responded to the question, with 46% saying they had suffered in the past year. This compares to 36% of health visitors and 33% of paramedics.

The results also reveal that 69% of midwives had felt pressure in the last three months to attend work when they were feeling unwell.

And 43% of them had witnessed potentially harmful errors, near misses or incidents in the last month alone.

Full article by Royal Society of Midwives 1 March 2016