Report to the People
7th November 2005

Restoring Confidence
While the Fatal Accident Inquiry into the tragic death of Chloe McIver found that her death could not have been avoided, it does highlight serious weaknesses in maternity services as a whole.  

There are no rules, the report reveals, about when (or even if) a Consultant should be sent to assist midwives, with a Consultant Paediatrician and the Director of Nursing giving contradictory evidence on the matter.  Further, the procedures for transferring a seriously ill baby to a more specialised unit were not clear to midwives.

It might well be the case, as the Sheriff sought to stress, that the IRH maternity unit being midwife, rather than consultant, led did not contribute in any way to this sad death.  It is certainly true, as I can testify from visiting the unit and meeting with the staff, that the midwives there deliver an excellent service and their skill and professionalism cannot be questioned.

But it is also the case that tragedies such as this will inevitably make expectant mothers in Greenock and Inverclyde apprehensive. 

That’s why, at First Minister’s Questions, I asked Jack McConnell about how we restore public confidence in the IRH maternity unit.  The first step, I argued, must be addressing the critical flaws which this inquiry exposed.

Overall, the picture is not, as the Health Board would have it, one of a service reorganised in the interests of patient safety, but of half-baked changes forced through with little thought to how they’d work in practice.

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