Former midwife felt 'forced' to leave profession to avoid putting lives at risk due to pressure
ITV News Meridian's Joe Coshan reports
A Kent midwife says she quit the profession as she felt she was becoming so burnt out she could pose a danger to mothers and babies she was trying to help.
Whitstable midwife, Piroska Cavell, says she felt forced to cut her career short due to pressures on the job.
She blamed the growing nationwide issue of chronic short-staffing for her decision to leave midwifery.
Ms Cavell says she found herself in situations including having to walk away from mothers who had just experienced stillbirth.
When a baby was going to be stillborn, she had experienced having to rush to another labour ward because she was the only senior midwife on shift - rather than support the grieving mother through her trauma.
She said: "Sometimes you'd find yourself in the situation where you'd have a delivery in one room, and it's all fantastic and lovely.
"But at the same time you're dealing with a woman who is losing her baby.
Piroska Cavell
"It got to the point where the resources are so restricted, that they were cutting the numbers of midwives on the shifts, so you'd have to cover ten delivery rooms, the antenatal ward, the triage, the postnatal ward, with just five or six of you.
"So every day, you are thinking is this the day something is going to happen, and I'm going to lose my registration.
"You can only sustain that amount of pressure for a short amount of time.
"I felt very guilty for leaving midwifery - it was a tough thing."
Piroska's not the only one to quit. Stark national figures show that for every 30 midwives who train - 29 of them leave.
In November many midwives lined the streets in Maidstone, Kent, to call for more support for those in the profession, to prevent them from feeling forced to leave.
In a statement released in November, the Department for Health and Social Care said, "We are committed to patient safety, eradicating avoidable harms and making the NHS the safest place in the world to give birth.
"Midwives do an incredibly important job and we know how challenging it has been for those working during the pandemic.
"There are more midwives working in the NHS now than at any other time in its history and we are aiming to hire 1,200 more with a £95 million recruitment drive.
"The mental health and wellbeing of staff remains a key priority and the NHS continues to offer a broad range of support including through dedicated helplines and mental health and wellbeing hubs."