What are you doing to restore birthing services at NDDH?

What are you doing to try to reopen the unit?

To safely reopen we will need to ensure that we have a resilient and sustainable workforce in place, and we anticipate it will be through a combination of temporary and permanent staff.

We have a recruitment campaign underway to fill the immediate gaps in the medical rota with temporary doctors, while also proactively recruiting permanent staff to support the service in the longer term.

There is a national shortage of doctors specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, and recruitment is highly competitive. Despite this, we have made positive progress and will provide updates about plans to reopen as soon as we can. 

Why are you only now recruiting?

We have continually been running recruitment campaigns for doctors specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology. Over the past year we have run multiple rounds of recruitment and whilst some of these have resulted in job offers from the Trust to individuals, unfortunately none of these have progressed further.

Our last round before we announced the temporary suspension concluded in July.

Reflecting on previous campaigns, we have refreshed our consultant recruitment at pace and have benchmarked our offer against other NHS trusts to ensure it is as competitive as possible. We also have an active marketing and executive search campaign in place.

Whilst we are doing all we can to offer attractive and competitive roles, there is a national shortage of suitably qualified obstetric consultants and the decision to permanently relocate to a smaller, rural unit will be a personal choice.