Midwifery is breaking my wife.
It’s breaking her physically, because it is a physical job and, because her NHS pension rests on it, it will keep breaking her until she’s 68, and still trying to lift patients onto beds, wading in a birthing pool or on her knees delivering a baby.
It’s breaking her mentally, because there aren’t enough staff and because responsibility is being pushed down the ranks rather than people being moved up them; senior clinical midwives are coordinating shifts, while ‘routine’ tasks are to be given to healthcare assistants.
(Fun aside: People having babies are, predominantly, young and healthy. Young and healthy bodies can, for a short while at least, compensate for things going catastrophically wrong. The gap between ‘Hmmm, this blood pressure is a little bit low’ and ‘Oh dear, this person is dead’ can be minutes. Training somebody to operate a BP machine and record the readings is like training somebody to read the fuel gauge in an aeroplane and telling them to give the pilot a shout if it says ‘Empty’)
(Less fun aside: Obstetrics is probably the only branch of medicine where a single mistake has a good chance of killing two people at the same time)
Anyway, my wife wants out, but prior to being a midwife her only real work experience was a series of admin jobs. She has a 1st class honours degree in midwifery, which is pretty vocational, and she refuses to believe that her skills are transferable.
She gets paid less than I do, and is really just looking to match her current salary elsewhere, so to make it easy for prospective employers I’ve decided to do a side-by-side comparison of our skills…
| Me | Her | |
|---|---|---|
| Education | 6 GCSE equivalents, plus a grade-4 CSE in Religious Education, can nearly speak English (Geordie, y’knaa) | First class honours degree, 5 A-levels, including French |
| Management Skills | Can look after a team of 8 people, as long as they don’t bother me too much. Sometimes we get 2 pieces of work scheduled for the same time and I have to make somebody else decide what’s more important | Coordinates 11½-hour shifts of a dozen midwives, of different skill levels, plus healthcare assistants and other ancillary staff. Daily manages situations where the number of patients is greater than the number of rooms or staff available. Makes her own decisions, and decisions on behalf of others, in the knowledge that she will be held legally responsible for them. Any mistakes or misjudgements may result in death. |
| Dedication | Pretty much a 9-5 guy (even though I finish at 5:30). Do sometimes work out of hours, if it’s important (in my opinion, not the opinion of the person shouting for the work to be done) | Routinely works for 12 hours at a time, without a proper meal break. Frequently foregoes toilet breaks to get the job done. Often arrives home dehydrated, because she hasn’t even had time to have a drink of water. |
| People skills | Not one of my strengths, but I’m quite logical, so can generally explain why things have to be done the way I say. Not good with the ‘touchy-feel’ stuff. | Can sit with an 8-month pregnant mum-to-be and tell her that her baby is already dead. |
| Numeracy | Great at this, and world-class at spreadsheets | Demonstrable ability to calculate potentially lethal doses of class-A controlled substances in her head, while a woman in the worst pain of her life screams her lungs out at her. Spreadsheets nothing to write home about; ‘competent’ at best. |
| Coping skills | Can manage when a project goes wrong, data is lost or the wrong numbers are sent to a client. Some success in turning around a potentially client-losing situations | “I went into the room (to assist another midwife) and there was blood pouring off the bed. It sounded like a tap running. She’d lost 80% of her circulating volume” (nobody died, btw) |
| Handling responsibility | Generally OK to decide things in meetings (where nobody takes the blame) | Is a sign-off mentor (somebody who says trainee midwives are fit to practice). Like all midwives, she’s a primary carer, meaning she’s legally responsible for the lives and well-being of both of her patients. Works under intense pressure, knowing that everything she decides to do (or not do) may one day be scrutinised in a court of law, in far calmer circumstances, by somebody who has never had to decide which of multiple labouring women was the priority. |
| Miscellaneous | Tinkers with IT. Manages a few data-protection questions. Writes up some policy stuff. Quite a good poof-reader | Copes with women suddenly decorating her with blood, vomit, or shit, abusive partners, death, harlequin babies (if you don’t know what this means then do not Google it if you believe there is a merciful god and/or want to sleep again), delivers babies that died in-utero weeks previously, is absolutely amazing, puts up with me and all my nonsense in her spare time. |
There’s a few other bits and pieces, but I think it’s pretty clear why my higher salary is justified, and she should be happy with her lot.
However, if you’re:
- Based in the North-East
- Have a decent job going
- Think that maybe, just maybe, some of her skills may be transferable
Then, please, let me know, because I don’t want her broken. She deserves better than a job which constantly leaves her miserable, run-down, and stressed.
If you don’t have a job to offer and if, for some crazy reason, you think that her skills are worth more than mine, that the thousands of women who are in her position deserve an employer who has their backs, deserve a properly staffed team, deserve time to eat and wee, deserve a chance to retire unbroken, and deserve the respect due to those who made sure our first seconds in this world were not our last, then talk to your MP.
Excel Pope 