It's so hard from a personal POV when you know there is understaffing, but although I have sympathy for the midwives on the ward/labour suite I don't think just going in helps them at all. The situation in some areas has changed from being dire to working extremely well in a few short years because the powers that be were forced to make changes. In many areas they will work with as few staff as possible to save money, where actually changing the way that they work would be more cost effective and promote choice in the long term. When necessary, wards will book bank staff to accomodate number of expected births, they will fill out incident forms and things will change because bank staff cost more money and incident forms can't be easily ignored. There are qualifying midwives desperate for jobs right now and no positions available for them, because some trusts are working with skeleton staff. The midwieves are there to fill those gaps, it's up to the trusts to employ them as necessary, not labouring women to toe the line and labour in an understaffed ward which she doesn't feel is the safest place for her. I would always say that we need to have realistic expectations of what the NHS can provide, but in this case it is misallocation, mismanagement and poor use of resources in some areas rather than funding which is the issue.
8 years ago my trust was exactly the same, yet today they have a dedicated homebirth team. The trust that is highlighted on birth choice UK as an example of poor care has changed dramatically with only a few small changes. If women just accept poor care, it continues.
