Interview with Rathi Guhadasan – Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital
Watch in full here:
Video transcript: “I’m Stephanie Miller, I’m a retired midwife obviously – worked for decades within the NHS, first as a nurse and then as a midwife. All I can say as a midwife, I never lost a mother or a baby, neither did my colleagues. Why are we now losing so many mothers in the 21st century? Why are we losing so many mothers and so many babies. Somebody must look and the rationale authorities – services have been decimated, fragmented – bureaucratic – literally interfered in what was a woman’s professional jobs that we handed down from one generation to another – we were dedicated, we were professional and we were safe. But they destroyed that when they broke us up into teams, so-called controlled choice and continuity – there was no choice, no continuity – and midwives were totally broken up into different groups, demoralised, over-worked and let some of our best midwives, our most experienced midwives left the NHS and the job they loved because they couldn’t take the pressure any more.
The demands were on them night and day and they simply couldn’t take it. That is why we are now suffering – we haven’t got the skills we had then, we have lost and we have lost because of bureaucrats – lack of management from the top to down – Simon Stevens, Jeremy Hunt, all to blame for the loss of mothers and our babies, they all have blood on their hands. Thank you.”