“The catalyst was that we had three deaths within a very short period of time. A couple of them were intrauterine deaths,not full-term deaths,and one was a stillbirth death the day before she was going to be induced,” Buckley says.
Buckley’s life has been irreparably changed as a result of the trauma she says she experienced while working as a midwife at Wollongong and Nowra hospitals. She has chosen to tell her story because she does not want other midwives and nurses to end up in her position and wants local area health districts across NSW to implement change in the form of counselling and debriefing support,and to add more staff to the roster.
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“In the last 10 years,there’s never ever been any opportunity to debrief after any traumatic events,” Buckley says. “There’s nothing set up as part of a well-being program. Doctors have a review once a month,and we have nothing like that. They get a chance to talk,we don’t.
“By the stage that I finally cracked,I’d really been in so many situations that I felt so unsupported and afraid,I was actually afraid to do my job and that that was going to impact on the guidance I gave to my mothers. I felt a snap in my nervous system,I called my husband and said,‘I can’t do this anymore. I am broken’.”
Buckley,who has authored a book about pregnancy and birth,says understaffing often meant midwives were stretched on the ward,and mothers and babies were put at risk because staff were unable to provide sufficient care.
“Just imagine a world where there are no midwives,there’s no one to be with you and hold your hands and tell you when to push and bring the baby out safely,” she says. “And it will go that way if something isn’t done. We need more staff,and we need better support.”