Midwives being ‘targeted and scapegoated’ by NMC, says RCM advisor

A professional advisor at the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has accused the nursing regulator of ‘targeting’ midwives after it launched a dashboard highlighting midwifery fitness to practise (FtP) cases.

The new Midwifery Data Dashboard was launched last week by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) to help the maternity care sector to ‘understand and address recurring themes when midwifery care goes wrong’.

It aims to provide data and insight from the regulator’s FtP processes, allowing users to see the most common allegation types involving midwives.

However, the regulator has now been accused of ‘targeting’ midwives due to the absence of comparative data for nurses.

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Ruby Handley-Stone, professional advisor for education at RCM, asked a meeting of the NMC council this week why there are not dashboards for other roles within nursing.

She said: ‘We welcome the separation, but we are concerned about the lack of comparison data.

‘It feels like we are being targeted. Why aren’t others under the same level of scrutiny?’

Paul Rees, chief executive and registrar, said the dashboard is a direct response to the national inquiries currently taking place into maternity and neonatal care across the country.

‘There are numerous reviews, inquiries and assessments across the UK and we’ve been engaging with those reviews,’ he said.

‘That’s why we’ve produced the data dashboard. We will take away whether we’ll do the same for nurses.’

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Ms Handley-Stone, a practicing midwife, also raised concerns about a quarterly midwifery report produced by the NMC which includes recommendations for anti-racism education for midwives.

According the latest NMC papers, the report is put together for the council to ‘provide greater assurance that midwifery is being considered within NMC’s regulatory work and is aligned to the UK-wide maternity narrative’.

It advises that the approach to anti-racism, unconscious bias and cultural competence needs to be ‘strengthened’ following reports from key organisations including the APPG for Black maternal health, MBRRACE and Five X More which ‘highlight disparities in outcomes for racially minoritised women’.

Ms Handley-Stone expressed concerns that anti-racism education is focused on only midwives and not nurses, adding that she feels midwives had been ‘scapegoated’.

In response, Mr Rees said that maternity issues for racially minoritised women was a ‘national emergency’.

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‘How we make a difference is [through] training,’ he said, adding that the issue will be addressed across both nursing and midwifery.

Last month, interim findings from the independent National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation revealed that maternity and neonatal services in England are failing to deliver consistent, safe and equitable care, with staffing pressures and structural racism among the most serious concerns.