Midwife told mother: I’ll get your baby out with a knife and fork
A MIDWIFE with decades of experience told a woman in labour that she would remove her baby ‘with a knife and fork’, it has been alleged.
Marion Owens, who worked as a senior midwife at Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, is also said to have sworn repeatedly at the expectant mother, telling her: ‘I’ve been a midwife for 20 f****** years and no f***** is telling me how to f****** care for a f****** woman in labour.’
The outburst emerged in papers released prior to a hearing by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) into Mrs Owens’s fitness to practise that began last week. The case was adjourned and no new date has been set for its resumption.
The NMC states in its code that midwives must respect ‘dignity’, ‘provide a high standard of practice and care at all times’, uphold the reputation of the profession and ‘must always be able to justify… decisions’.
The victim was not named in the allegations set out by the NMC ahead of the case, but was instead referred to Patient A.
Mrs Owens was sacked in December 2012 – six months after the alleged incident – after displaying ‘serious and significant failings’, according to the Trust.
She began working as a nurse in 1987 before qualifying as a midwife in 1993, but has temporarily been banned from practising midwifery.
It is also alleged that while caring for Patient A, Mrs Owens gave her a dose of Prostin, which helps induce labour. Prostin, a brand of the medicine Dinoprostone, should be prescribed with ‘special care’, according to the NHS, but Mrs Owens gave it to the patient without a prescription.
The NHS website warns that one in 100 people who take the drug experience problems with the foetus, such as foetal distress or heart-rate problems.
Last night Mrs Owens’s husband, speaking from the family home in Liverpool, dismissed the alleged comments as ‘banter’.
He told a reporter who asked to speak to his wife: ‘I would not have thought she would want to talk to you because she was quite upset at the way it was portrayed.’
When the reporter read the allegations put forward by the NMC, Mr Owens, who would not reveal his first name, said: ‘I don’t think that was exactly how the conversation evolved. Like I say it was banter, it was taken out of context. If she thought it was going into print I think she would be horrified.’
Coleen Rooney, wife of England captain Wayne Rooney, gave birth to her two sons Kai, four, and Klay, one, at the hospital. In May, Jeanette Matthews, a midwife from West Yorkshire, was struck off after she threatened to ‘cut’ a patient while she was in labour. Ms Matthews, who worked for Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘If you don’t hurry up and have this baby I am going to cut you.’
She then asked the patient to ‘hurry up’ because she had ordered a curry. Ms Matthews was removed from the midwifery register after a panel found that it was ‘the only sanction that would be sufficient to protect patients and to protect the public interest’.
Referring to the case of Mrs Owens, a spokesman for the Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust said: ‘While no direct patient harm was found to have been caused, the midwife in question was deemed to have displayed serious and significant failings in her professional duty of care.
‘This investigation resulted in her dismissal from Liverpool Women’s in December 2012, and the Trust also referred its findings to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.’