Miscarriage: A New Development
NHS employees now entitled paid leave for confirmed miscarriages
I’m currently on an obstetrics and gynaecology rotation and I’m trying to get to grips with an entire branch of medicine.
Alongside the medicine, procedures and information, I’m also getting to grips with the emotions involved..
I’ve spent the entire weekend on nights, assessing gynae patients on the ward and A&E. As part of this I’ve been dealing with patients with miscarriages.
Miscarriages are painful. Both for the patient as well as the practitioner. For the patient, regardless of how many children they have, losing the foetus is incredibly upsetting.
It has been announced that NHS staff in England who have a miscarriage will receive up to 10 days additional paid leave under new guidance. Until I had witnessed a miscarriage and its impact, I never truly understood how positive such legislation is for a patient.
The psychological impact is huge.
The last patient I had seen was a 32 year old woman who already had a child that was 5 years old but was trying to conceive for a number of years. She had huge amounts of PV bleeding and I was tasked with examining her cervix and retrieving a number of clots. She was upset, tearful and tense and this made the entire examination difficult.
Despite reassuring her, taking my time and explaining how important it was for her to relax I realised that there was little I could do to make her feel better. In the end I was unable to stop her bleeding by removing the clots so we admitted her.
Under new legislation, women who have miscarried under 24 weeks are entitled 10 days paid leave with their partners offered up to five days. I can’t stress how positive of a step this is for an entire family.
As an A&E doctor I used to see pregnant women with PV bleeding all the time. You may also refer patients from general practice with suspicion of a miscarriage. Whilst not all employers grant leave in such instances, it is still worth mentioning that time off is available to patients and they should speak to their employer. With the cost of living crisis, some people cannot afford to take time off but those working in the NHS are now able to, without any worries.
It’s small wins like this that restores the humanity of our health service.
Until next time!
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