‘I’m very stressed…’

Abstract

I am contacted regularly by student midwives and midwives who tell me they are desperate, ‘burnt -out’ and sad that they can’t give the midwifery care they want to. It’s a story frequently told; as a clinical midwife, I said the same words myself several times to my managers. I also recounted these anguished messages to the head of finance when working as a senior midwifery manager and advocating for the retention of midwives. If we want to provide meaningful, secure maternity care and to feel able to work as a midwife, then we need strategies. The first is to care for ourselves. We are human beings, with a basic hierarchy of needs that if unmet will potentially render us helpless and ineffective and potentially sick. ‘Self-care’ has become to some an unwelcome buzz word, often used in the same sentence as ‘resilience’ which is another cause of contention. Yet, both concepts are absolutely crucial in sustaining our practice – they represent an area of well-being, and what can be more important than that?