Latest news with #midwifery
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jeremy Clarkson becomes midwife to deliver his dog Arya's 11 puppies
The Clarkson's Farm star was busy delivering his dog's puppies while England's Lionesses won the Euros 2025 against Spain Jeremy Clarkson acts as a midwife to deliver his dog Arya's 11 puppies after recently discovering midwifery is a talent of his. While England's Lionesses lifted the Euros 2025 trophy after beating Spain in penalties, the Clarkson's Farm star was incredibly busy delivering the animals at his Oxfordshire home. The ecstatic TV presenter, 65, celebrated the arrival of the puppies and he shared his excitement about the football. "Now I know you've all been enjoying the football but I've been rather busy, if I'm honest, because look what Arya's done!" Clarkson said in a piece to camera, shared on Instagram. "Yay! Well done Lionesses but really, really, really well done Arya!" His dog Arya appears on Clarkson's Farm alongside his other fox-red Labrador Retriever Sansa. Both dogs — named after the Game of Thrones characters — were sent off for training but came back just as mischievous in amusing Clarkson's Farm scenes. Diddly Squat Farm manager Kaleb Cooper was delighted to hear the news about the puppies. He commented on the Instagram post: "Whoop whoop! Can't wait to meet them all!" Jeremy Clarkson becomes a midwife One of Clarkson's followers was convinced his girlfriend, Lisa Hogan, would have been the midwife after showing her maternal side on Clarkson's Farm. Among the comments, one follower said: "Well done Arya and Lisa (who I'm sure was midwife!)." However, the former Top Gear host declared he was the midwife on this occasion. Clarkson wrote back: "Actually, I was!!" Many of his following praised his efforts, with one saying: "A man of many talents who can now add midwifery to his CV!!" Another added: "After the lambs, you earned the title Mr Clarkson - Journalist, Broadcaster, Midwife!" Someone else said: "You're now a vet as well as a farmer. The list gets bigger." "Is there anything Mr C can't do?" Despite the huge amount of interest in the puppies from his followers, it's not known whether he will become a dog breeder or whether they will all become stars on Clarkson's Farm. Clarkson did say he was done with business, though. He told The Times: "I am not starting another business as long as I live." His businesses include: the Clarkson's Farm show, Diddly Squat farm shop, The Farmer's Dog pub, Hawkstone's brewery. They have all proven to be a great success. Jeremy Clarkson has finally found his calling In April, Clarkson had discovered he had an unlikely talent when it comes to being a midwife — and it's something he really enjoys too. He wrote in The Times: "I'm sure there are many people who go through life like this, never really finding anything that they're good at or which they truly enjoy. But last week [April 26] that changed for me because, finally, after nearly 65 years of being average to poor at everything, I finally found something I both love and am quite good at. Midwifery." Clarkson helped deliver calves for the first time when his cows on Diddly Squat Farm were due. No doubt the scenes will play out in a future series of Clarkson's Farm. Previously, he has been present at a lot of animal births, including puppies, but he hasn't got involved. The TV presenter has helped lambs give birth in the past but he insisted that it isn't midwifery, "that's running a production line". Clarkson totally changed his life when he bought Diddly Squat Farm and became a farmer. It has taken his life in a different direction but he has found farming has become one of his true passions and now midwifery has too.
The Guardian
20-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Ministers urged to guarantee NHS jobs for new midwives amid understaffing
A student midwife who fears she will be unable to get a job after completing 2,300 hours of unpaid placement work in the NHS is calling for guaranteed posts for newly qualified midwives who otherwise will be forced to abandon the profession before their careers begin. Aimee Peach, 43, is due to complete her training next summer, but says the promise of a job at the end of her three-year degree course has 'collapsed', despite severe shortages of midwives across the country. 'It is a waste of talent, training and public money, and the consequences will be felt by families across the country,' she said. 'There are so many of us that just want to work as midwives after three years of gruelling training, but we're having to face the fact that, after all this, there may be only a handful of jobs available.' Last month, a survey by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) found that eight out of 10 student midwives due to qualify this year were not confident of finding a job after graduating despite understaffing in maternity care. Some services have had to close temporarily due to unsafe levels of staffing. According to the RCM, funding cuts and recruitment freezes have tied the hands of midwifery managers who are desperate to hire staff. Fiona Gibb, the RCM's director of midwifery, said: 'Report after report cites understaffing as a factor in the delivery of safe care, and midwives consistently share with us that there are too few of them to deliver the best care they know they can. 'Despite this, midwifery graduates face uncertainty, with too few vacancies for them to begin work upon qualification … The new midwives who are now ready are finding that the jobs simply aren't there.' Peach, from Bridgwater, Somerset, has combined academic study with on-the-job training and caring for her three children since beginning her midwifery degree. Student midwives must complete 2,300 hours of work placements and deliver 40 babies to qualify. She had hoped the qualification would lead to a higher household income and good career prospects as well as pursuing her commitment to improving women's experience of pregnancy and birth. 'It's been a pretty hard couple of years, both physically and mentally, but I had a goal in sight. No one chooses midwifery to have a comfortable job – you have to have a passion for it,' she said. That passion helped her through unpaid 12-hour shifts, sometimes at night. On occasion she has slept in the back of her car on her placement more than 80 miles from her home. 'After all this, we now face the scary prospect that we might not get jobs.' Earlier this month, Peach wrote to her MP, Ashley Fox, to draw his attention to the problem. 'A recent national search for band 5 [newly qualified] midwifery roles revealed just four vacancies across England despite an estimated national shortage of over 2,500 midwives,' she wrote. 'I have witnessed first-hand the consequences of understaffing and burnout in maternity services, yet thousands of qualified professionals are unable to secure employment. There is no shortage of qualified midwives, only a shortage of funded positions.' Peach asked Fox to back a call for guaranteed NHS jobs for newly qualified midwives, increased funding for maternity services and for student debt to be cancelled for healthcare workers who complete five years of continuous NHS service. Fox replied saying he would seek an opportunity to raise the matter in parliament. Gibb said: 'Having enough midwives, in the right places, with the right skills and training is fundamental to the safety improvements that are desperately needed across maternity services. 'We are calling on all four national UK governments to review their midwifery workforce planning approach and call a halt to the recruitment freezes that are preventing women and their families from receiving the care they need and deserve.' A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: 'Student nurses and midwives like Aimee are our future workforce and it is unacceptable that they are unable to find roles. 'NHS England has set up a dedicated programme of work with employers, educators and trade unions to address this. 'We will revise the workforce plan later this year, to ensure the NHS has the right people in the right place, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need.'
RNZ News
14-07-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Student nurses and midwives on workload, financial pressure
Australia has just introduced a payment for eligible students doing unpaid placements, including nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work. Photo: 123RF Student nurses and midwives say they are taking on the same workload as qualified staff in order to fill gaps in the sector, and they are doing it all for free. It comes as nurses, midwives and other healthcare staff around the country prepare to take strike action over what they say is a failure by Health NZ to address their staffing concerns. Australia has just introduced a payment for eligible students doing unpaid placements, including nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work. The latest New Zealand Nurses Organisation student survey found finances were a significant issue for over 80 percent of respondents, along with 60 percent who said they had to significantly reduce their paid work hours during placement. Many students said a similar system should be introduced here to support them through their studies. Maisy Holzer is in the second year of her midwifery degree at Ara Institute of Canterbury. She said the three year degree has four years worth of content squeezed into it, making for a busy load of hands-on work placements, assignments and tests. By this point, over 20 percent of her cohort has either taken a break from the course or dropped out. "It's quite tricky, we have assignments that go through the entire year, for example I'm working a 42 hour week on placement next week and I've got a 2000 word assignment due the monday after. So it's tricky to find that balance, for sure." Over the three years midwifery students must complete 2400 hours of practical placements, or 54 weeks full time. In her first year of study Holzer managed to occasionally work a casual job to bring in a little extra cash on top of her student allowance. But she said between the workload, mental load and placements she had to quit, something that had made her already stretched budget even tighter. "Things like petrol, you're driving home after a night shift and going I don't get paid for a couple of days but my gas light's on am I gonna make it home in time? "Things like food, trying to make sure you're still eating well but it becomes trickier. If you've had a really busy week and you've had to pay for parking heaps. It becomes a real strain and you have to budget really really meticulously." Holzer said part of the degree requirement was a rural placement, most often completed out of the region, meaning the majority of students would have to relocate and self-fund their travel and accommodation fees, adding to the financial strain. Sana Ahmed is in her final year of a three year nursing degree at the University of Waikato. In six months, at just 20 years old, she would be a qualified nurse. But she said carrying the strain of full-time clinical placements, patient care, strict assignment deadlines and a weekend part-time job often made her feel like she was missing out on her twenties, rarely finding a moment for herself. "When I do like eight-hour shifts, that's expected from me each day, I come home, I'm so exhausted but I still have to open my laptop and finish on those assignments or prepare for assessments." As she reached the end of her degree, Ahmed was preparing for the final 10 week stretch of clinical placement. Unlike the previous 28 weeks, she had already completed, this time she'll be rostered anytime between Monday and Sunday, including late nights, leaving no time for her part-time job. "I knew nursing would be intense, I knew it required a lot, but I didn't expect it to be this difficult... people say it's a tough degree but I didn't realise how much we were expected to carry without proper support. "I thought there would be more financial support, or at least some form of compensation during the placement." Ahmed said by the time she reached her second year of study she already felt like she was taking on the same workload and pressures as a fully trained nurse. "We're expected to arrive on time, we're expected to attend those meetings early in the morning in each ward, we're expected to do handovers, we're expected to take over the patient load, so pretty much we're doing what is expected of the nurses." Organiser of Paid Placements Aoteroa Bex Howells delivered a petition to parliament in May last year calling for a stipend for all students undertaking unpaid placements. And despite the petition gathering more than 16,000 signatures, she said they were no closer to a solution. "[The government] acknowledges that we have a workforce shortage and we need to do something about it, they need to support people into these professions and that Australia has recently introduced paid training, and that the European Union has voted to ban unpaid placements on the grounds that they're exploitative. "But [the government] is not going to do anything about this because it's not an immediate solution to staffing crisis that have been decades in the making." NZ Nurses Organisation Kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said there were still significant deficits in the nursing workforce numbers which contributed to the demand on students. "It's a bigger systemic problem, many schools of nursing are trying to ensure clinical placements for students don't encounter those types of pressures, but it's really difficult to achieve that when the system itself is clogged up, under pressure and overloaded." Checkpoint has approached Health NZ Te Whatu Ora for comment. 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Daily Mail
09-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Newborn baby died after mother was left to give birth alone on NHS hospital ward by midwives and doctors, inquest told
A newborn baby died after the mother was left to give birth alone by midwives and doctors, an inquest told. Liliwen Iris Thomas was born at the University of Wales Hospital but died just hours later after her mother's cries for help were ignored during labour. An inquest into the death of Liliwen was held at Pontypridd Coroner's Court on Tuesday. The assistant coroner for South Wales Central, Rachel Knight, explained that Emily Brazier was admitted to hospital for an induced labour on October 8, 2022, at '40+1 weeks'. Ms Brazier was given pethidine and codeine for pain relief, however she was 'not attended to or subjected to physical checks regularly enough', the inquest heard. The mother was not attended to by anyone from the midwifery team for almost an hour during the early hours of October 10, which is when she cried for help, and 'the fact she had moved to active labour was missed'. Staff eventually came to find that Liliwen had been delivered unattended. The newborn was described as being in a 'very poor condition' and died later that same day. The heartbroken mother previously said how she was 'angry' at being left completely alone during childbirth. She said she remembered 'being in a cycle of puffing gas and air, passing out, and repeating'. She added: 'So many happy memories and special family moments are tinged with sadness. I dread family events and Christmas as Liliwen will never be there, she will always be the missing piece, her death should never have happened and that's hard to live with.' The inquest heard that Cardiff and Vale University Health Board admitted that when Ms Brazier was admitted to hospital there not enough midwives on duty, with only 17 present when the required number was 24. Two on-call midwives then arrived for duty to take the number up to 19. Liliwen's father Rhodri was not present during his daughter's birth because partners were not allowed on the ward during that time due to the hospital having strict rules about visitors overnight between 9pm and 9am. Summing up at the hearing, Ms Knight said: 'Liliwen died from a hypoxic brain injury following an unattended delivery in hospital'. She added that the death was a culmination of the mother 'not being attended to as frequently as she should have been', 'the absence of resuscitation at birth', and 'a bacterial infection of the placenta'. The official cause of death, as recorded by Dr Andrew Bamber following an investigation, was given aa a lack of oxygen at birth, known medically as perinatal asphyxia. Abigail Holmes, director of midwifery and neonatal services at the University of Wales Hospital, told the hearing that Liliwen's death represented 'the most tragic case I've ever been involved with'. She said new policies had been put into practice and that investment had been made into staff and training. Dr Rachel Liebling, a consultant obstetrician and specialist in fetal and maternal medicine, said failings by the health board 'more than minimally' contributed to the death of Liliwen. Ms Knight concluded the inquest by offering her condolences to Liliwen's family and said that, having read extensive evidence, she had decided not to issue a Regulation 28 Prevention of Future Deaths report. She said that Liliwen's death had a 'seismic impact on the largest hospital in Wales' and was 'satisfied that protocols and guidance have been thoroughly reviewed and that staff within the health board have been significantly retrained'. However, Ms Knight added that she 'remains concerned' that the learning from this case might not have reached other health boards across England and Wales. Therefore a report will be rafted to target the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence so that it can consider the findings made following Liliwen's death. Following the conclusion of the inquest, Lara Bennett, senior associate at Slater and Gordon, a Cardiff law firm representing the baby's family, said: 'This case is truly shocking and Emily, Rhodri and their family have been left absolutely devastated by Liliwen's death. 'To have to relive the trauma again at the inquest, and to hear how their beloved baby was failed, has been hugely distressing. Liliwen and Emily were abandoned at a time when their care should have been the hospital's top priority. 'While it is claimed that lessons have been learned, and changes have been implemented, this tragic case highlights concerns regarding understaffing on maternity wards and the absence of basic care and monitoring for mothers and babies at their most vulnerable. 'Had this been provided, Liliwen would not have suffered as she did and would be with her family today.' 'Liliwen's death must not be in vain and the maternity care standards across Wales must be improved to ensure no mother or baby ever suffers in this way again.' On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, said: 'Our sincere thoughts and heartfelt condolences remain with Liliwen's family during this incredibly difficult time.'
BBC News
08-07-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Baby Liliwen Thomas died after unattended mum gave birth in coma
A newborn baby died after her mother was left unattended by midwives and gave birth in a coma following a strong reaction to pain killers, an inquest has Iris Thomas died on 10 October 2022, 20 hours after she was born at the University Hospital of Wales in Pontypridd inquest heard there was a "failure to take adequate care" of mother Emily Brazier, who was not checked for an hour after being administered significant doses of pethidine and codeine, and given unrestricted access to gas and air.A cause of death for Liliwen was given as asphyxia or a lack of oxygen during birth. Head of Midwifery at Cardiff and Vale health board Abigail Holmes apologised to the family and said that "profound changes" had been made following Liliwen's coroner's court heard Liliwen was in a "poor condition" when she was found under the sheets "between mum's legs" on 10 October 2022, at a time when partners were not allowed into the ward unless a woman was in active meant Liliwen's father, Rhodri Thomas, was not Brazier had been booked in for an induction on 7 October 2025 due to low PAPP-A levels which meant there was a risk of complications. But she had to return the following day due to low staffing coroner's court heard on 9 October at around 19:30, a discussion started around pain relief and over the next few hours, Ms Brazier was given 100mg of pethidine, 60 mg of codeine and repeatedly used gas and air (Entonox).But a midwife failed to spot she was in active labour meaning she should have been moved to one-to-one was not checked at all between 01:15 and 02:14 when a "faint cry for help was heard" and midwives rushes to her..A report by a medical expert said it was likely Ms Brazier suffered an "exaggerated pharmacological response resulting in a coma, during which time she delivered the baby unattended and was unable to summon help"."This was most likely due to sensitivity to codeine and pethidine," it added, saying the "self-administering of Entonox contributed to Ms Brazier's inability to respond".The coroner's court heard this happened when the ward was "exceptionally busy".Staff shortages were also "so acute that there was a call to the community to bring midwives in".At the time, 17 hospital midwives were on shift, with two drafted in from the community - 24 is the minimum number of midwives that should be available during the day, according to the health board. Giving evidence, head of midwifery Ms Holmes, who was not in post at the time, described it as "the most tragic case"."The impact it has had on us as a staffing body has been greatly felt by every member of our team, regardless of grade," she said. Addressing the family directly, Ms Holmes added: "We are working tirelessly to make sure something like this never happens again. "I know this doesn't bring your daughter back and I am so, so sorry."Ms Holmes outlined a series of changes that had been made at the health board, some within weeks of Liliwen's included major changes to the way pain relief is administered to women during both early and active Rachel Knight said the case was "nothing short of a tragedy" and it was clear that it had a "seismic impact on maternity care" in the health Knight said she would be preparing a Prevention of Future Deaths report as she "remained concerned" that NICE guidelines on labour induction were "not sufficiently explicit".In a statement, Lara Bennett, a solicitor representing Liliwen's family said: "While it is claimed that lessons have been learned, and changes have been implemented, this tragic case highlights concerns regarding understaffing on maternity wards and the absence of basic care and monitoring for mothers and babies at their most vulnerable."Had this been provided, Liliwen would not have suffered as she did and would be with her family today."It is imperative that the policy changes to maternity services implemented by Cardiff and Vale University Health Board as a direct result of this tragic event are adopted across all Welsh Health Boards."Liliwen's death must not be in vain and the maternity care standards across Wales must be improved to ensure no mother or baby ever suffers in this way again."
