The health service

In May 2016, the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) launched a new Caring for You campaign as it warned that midwife burn-out is leading to fears about patient safety. A new survey by the union found that almost half (48%) of respondents felt stress every day or most days. The most common reasons for the stress were workload (78%); staff shortages (76%); and not having enough time to do their job (65%). In addition, over half of midwives and maternity support workers said they had seen an error, near miss or incident that could have hurt service users in the last month. And half of the respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the statement “I am worried about making a mistake at work because I am exhausted”.