The vacancy rate in the central region is the worst, 40.7 per cent, meaning two in five midwife jobs are vacant. This region includes Wellington, Hawke’s Bay and Whanganui.
It comes as National MP Catherine Wedd’s members’ bill has been pulled from the ballot which would allow women to access their choice of postnatal care for a minimum of 72 hours after giving birth, instead of the 48 hours that are currently funded.
The midwife vacancies have been revealed in answers to Written Parliamentary Questions by Labour health spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall.
Verrall said wards needed better resourcing to make extended hospital stays a reality.
“That needs to be a priority otherwise it’s a very hollow gesture to put forward this bill.”
The current rate of vacancies was unacceptably high and left nurses to step in and fill the gaps, Verrall said.
“Those units are trying to provide safe care as well as they can but it is not a desirable long-term situation. Midwives are specialists in attending to women before, during and after birth.”
Labour's health spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall and Health Minister Shane Reti.
Health Minister Shane Reti did not respond to questions about Wedd’s bill but said growing the health workforce was a priority for the Government.
The midwifery workforce employed by Health New Zealand increased by 10 per cent in 2023, Reti said.
Health New Zealand was focused on supporting and attracting people to the profession, retaining midwives, and encouraging those who have left the profession to return, he said.
“Health New Zealand is working directly with midwifery education providers and the Midwifery Council to get a better student experience. Areas of discussion include length and flexibility of study, credit for prior learning, recognition of work as clinical hours, and post-graduate pathways.”
On the campaign trail, National promised to allow qualified midwives to enter the country on a six-month temporary visa, without a job offer, to look for work and bring their immediate family members with them.
The policy included a relocation support scheme offering up to 1000 qualified overseas nurses and midwives relocation grants worth up to $10,000 each to support their move.
Reti did not respond to questions about when that policy would be implemented.
In March, more funding was announced by Health New Zealand to support former midwives to return to practice, Reti said.
They can receive between $1260 and $7050 to cover costs such as course fees or renewing their certificate.
“Support is also available to graduate midwives through the Voluntary Bonding Scheme which offers new midwives up to $17,500 over five years,” Reti said.
“The scheme was expanded this year to include all new [2023] graduate midwives nationwide and those graduates from 2022 who hadn’t yet registered for the scheme.”
Reti also pointed to a pay equity settlement reached under the Labour government last year, when Verrall was the health minister, with midwives and maternity care assistants employed by Health New Zealand.
The new pay rates range from $76,235 for a graduate midwife to $153,060 for a senior midwife.
Verrall was concerned about a lack of momentum under the new Government on a health workforce plan that was published in July 2023 when Labour was in power.
The plan included reducing attrition from midwifery programmes by 30 per cent. Reti did not answer questions as to why this was not currently a target.
When the workforce plan was published, there were 1050 midwife vacancies nationally. About half of the country’s midwifery workforce is employed directly by Health New Zealand, and about one-third are self-employed working as lead maternity carers in communities
Midwives’ union Meras co-leader (midwifery) Caroline Conroy said the vacancy rate was heading in the right direction but there was still a big gap to fill.
“We’re seeing improved retention rates of students through the midwifery programme so that’s giving us a larger cohort of midwives coming out as new graduates as well.”
Conroy said this was partly due to changing the length of the midwifery training programme from three years to four.
This allowed more opportunity for students to work and earn money while they studied as they were previously using university holidays to do clinical placements, she said.
“There has been an improvement this year but it’s going to be a slow climb out of the extreme staffing situation that we were experiencing up to last year.”
Conroy said vacancies had taken a toll on midwives working extra hours.
The situation created delayed inductions of labour and impacted breastfeeding rates because there were not enough midwives to support women having problems, Conroy said.
Data caveats
The most recently available Health New Zealand midwifery vacancy data was from December 31, 2023, and was extracted on May 1, 2024.
Vacancy data for the December 2023 quarter was unavailable from the Canterbury and West Coast districts as they are undertaking data quality improvement processes.
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in women’s health, local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.
