The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) Cymru has expressed disappointment after a number of newly qualified midwives across Wales learnt today they haven’t secured an NHS role – despite ongoing pressures in maternity services. 

Graduate midwives found out this afternoon if they had been granted a position through the HEIW streamlining process. In previous years, all secured positions, but this year there are fewer jobs available. 

This is despite maternity services being under pressure, as national reviews continue to highlight the need for safe staffing and investment in the maternity workforce. 

Julie Richards, RCM Cymru Director, said: “It leaves us questioning how many newly qualified midwives, who are ready and willing to work, can be left without jobs while services continue to struggle with workforce shortages. 

“It’s disappointing that there are insufficient jobs for all graduate midwives when we desperately need them in the workforce to ease the staffing crisis in our maternity services. But until we bring every one of the newly qualified midwives into a role where they are caring for women and babies, it’s just not enough. 

“We’re willing and committed to working with HEIW and health boards to ensure there are sufficient jobs in a system, which is currently so over-stretched.” 

RCM Cymru and its Student Midwife Forum has been making the case to the Welsh Government for action, so that newly qualified midwives can ease the current staffing crisis and start the career they are educated in. Just last week, a Graduate Summit was held to discuss the issue and commission places through Healthcare Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) securing jobs for graduates.  

RCM Cymru has consistently warned that staffing shortages in maternity services must be treated as a safety issue. In its response to the Maternity and Neonatal Assessment: Pathways to Safer Beginnings in Wales, RCM Cymru called for urgent action from the Welsh Government, including dedicated funding and full implementation of the report’s recommendations. 

The report found that staffing levels in maternity and neonatal services have not kept pace with increasing demand and complexity of care. It identified workforce shortages as a key risk to safety and called for urgent action to ensure services have enough staff, with the right skills and support, to provide safe, high-quality care for women, babies and families. 

Julie added: “On one hand we have national reviews and assessments highlighting the urgent need to improve staffing levels to ensure safe, equitable care. On the other, we are seeing newly qualified midwives facing uncertainty about their future employment. That simply does not add up. This is a breach of the promise to students made at the beginning of their courses, that there would be a role for them in Wales at the end of years of hard training, at huge personal cost” 

RCM Cymru is calling on the Welsh Government and NHS Wales Health Boards to urgently progress workforce planning and assurance actions, including the completion of full assessments of the safe staffing needs for services, to ensure services are safely staffed and that new midwives can be retained within the NHS. 

Earlier this year, RCM Cymru gathered midwives’ experiences about staffing shortages within the workplace, with one final year student saying that it’s evident there aren’t enough staff when they had were on placement, adding: “The student midwives are used to provide breastfeeding support, provide postnatal/antenatal checks, document care, change bedding – all without a job at the end of it. The past three years have felt like a waste and it is the only job I can ever see myself in.” 

Another student told RCM Cymru: “As a student midwife there have been many shifts where midwives have shared that they wouldn’t have been able to cope on the shift without myself and the presence of other students due to the workload.” 

Julie said: “We’ve heard many experiences from student midwives where they’ve been invaluable during placements, which they’re not paid for. It’s heart-breaking that after three years of education and hundreds of hours of placements, there are now graduate midwives in Wales who haven’t got a job. We risk losing the next generation of midwives as a result.”