YOUR UNION
JILL OVENS MERAS CO-LEADER (INDUSTRIAL)
St George’s midwives shocked at proposed closure Midwives were left stunned after a meeting in mid-March between maternity staff and St George’s Hospital Chief Executive, Blair Roxborough. Much to the staff’s surprise, a ‘change proposal’ presented by the CE outlined four options for the future of the hospital’s maternity service, including closure. The 22 midwives, all but one of whom are MERAS members, were left in no doubt that closing the maternity unit was St George’s preference. Two other options involved scaling the maternity service back. In a submission detailing our response, MERAS made it clear members’ preferred option was to continue the full maternity service.
St George’s midwife Noemi Gulliver has emphasised that women must have choices about where they have their babies, and the support they receive postnatally. She told the CE of St George's the midwives’ main concern was for the women of Christchurch.
12 | AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND MIDWIFE
St George’s has been providing maternity care to Christchurch women since the 1940s. A new maternity ward opened in late 2020 included three purpose-built birthing rooms (two with birthing pools), and a 12-bed postnatal facility. The service is well supported, with more than 500 births and around 1,000 postnatal stays each year (including transfers from Christchurch Women’s Hospital). Although St George’s is a private hospital, the maternity service is very reliant on its contract with the Canterbury DHB. Two rooms set aside for women paying privately were not well publicised, were rarely used, and the private service has since been discontinued. Members were told that a drop in postnatal transfers from Christchurch Women’s Hospital over the past six months had affected financial viability. The trend towards early discharge, partly because of restrictive visiting policies due to Covid-19, resulted in fewer postnatal transfers to the unit.
St George’s was also concerned about the impact of a new DHB primary unit due to open next year in the central city. After years of lobbying from the midwifery community, the DHB announced that a new central city unit with 20 beds and four birthing suites would open in early 2023. It has since revised the opening time to mid-2023. MERAS argued that closure of St George’s would leave a huge gap in primary birthing options in the meantime, and that there would still be an ongoing need for the service St George’s provides after the new DHB unit opens. Until 2016 there were two primary units in Christchurch – St George’s and one operated by the DHB at Burwood – both meeting the demand for primary birthing options and postnatal stays. In the MERAS submission, we said birthing centres have different styles and ambience, and this is likely to occur in the Christchurch context with each unit appealing to different women, but increasing the overall number of women who birth in a primary setting.
