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Internal Queensland Health documents reveal the extent of maternity staff shortages in the state's rural hospitals, forcing some on birthing bypass for days at a time.
- Innisfail, Mareeba, Ingham, Ayr and Dalby hospitals all had to suspend birthing services for periods in 2022/23
- Midwives can look after 20 patients, including mothers and babies, on a single shift
- Shannon Fentiman has hinted a staffing announcement is pending, and will meet with a union representative
While Gladstone Hospital's 11-month maternity bypass — which ended in June — has been widely publicised, shorter birthing disruptions in other facilities have also been ongoing, the documents show.
More than 200 pages, released under right-to-information (RTI) laws, reveal rural hospitals in Queensland's north have been particularly prone to short-term birthing bypasses in 2022 and 2023.
Innisfail, Mareeba, Ingham, Ayr and Dalby hospitals have all had to suspend birthing services for periods varying from a few hours to several days in a 13-month period between April 2022 and May 2023.
Reasons given for the bypasses relate to workforce issues including fatigue, unsustainable on-call burdens, illness and a lack of obstetric staff or midwifery coverage.
Mareeba went on birthing bypass about 10 times and Innisfail five times during the 13 months.
It's unclear how many birthing women had to be transferred to the Cairns Hospital during these temporary bypasses.
Release of the documents coincided with a noisy rally outside state parliament in Brisbane this week, where midwives protested about their workloads, describing them as "unsafe" and "dangerous".
Audits showed individual Queensland midwives could be expected to look after 20 patients, including mothers and babies, on a single shift.
Queensland Nurses and Midwives' Union secretary Kate Veach will meet Health Minister Shannon Fentiman today to discuss midwifery workloads, with the minister hinting an announcement is pending.
Commenting on the RTI documents, Ms Fentiman said pressures on staffing capacity impacted the types of services that could be delivered.
"That's why we have processes in place to address emergent staff vacancies, so we can adjust our services delivery for the safety of the local communities that our hospitals serve," she said.
"The alternative to that approach is to run an unsafe service with fatigued or inappropriately supervised staff."
The health minister said stakeholders at a Queensland maternity round table in June identified that clearer communication about when services were reduced or changed was "an absolute must".
"That's why work is underway to improve how we better record and report these types of service disruptions, so that Queenslanders can continue to have confidence in the world-class health system we have in this state," Ms Fentiman said.
She said the state government was investing more than $4 million on a review to design sustainable models of maternity care in locations that had been most exposed to bypass.
"This approach ensures that we are strengthening the capability of these maternity services, making them more resilient in the face of workforce absences and other service pressures," the minister said.
In a statement, Queensland Health said the department provided millions of instances of care every year.
"Like any organisation operating hundreds of facilities across the entire state, there are times when clinicians or other staff may need unplanned leave," a spokesman said.
"This could occur because a doctor in a facility falls ill or needs emergency leave for family reasons."
Queensland runs 41 public maternity services.
"Birthing is just one part of the comprehensive maternity care offered in the public health system," the department's spokesman said.
"In most circumstances, mothers can receive their antenatal and postnatal care at their closest hospital, but may need to attend a larger hospital for the actual birth.
"Where it's not possible to provide a safe birthing service, mothers are referred to the closest hospital able to safely provide care."
National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' president Gino Pecoraro said maternity services across Australia were struggling with workforce issues.
"It would appear that there are more hospitals, particularly in regional centres, going on bypass more frequently than I've ever seen before," Dr Pecoraro said.
"I would be interested to see if Queensland data supports that. It's not just happening in Queensland, but Queensland is what I know most about.
"We need to look at why. What has changed to make it worse than it was?"
Dr Pecoraro blamed the closure of maternity units in private hospitals and a "decreasing desire" for doctors with obstetric or anaesthetic training to want to work in regional Queensland public hospitals.
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