Work on the new mid-wife led maternity unit at the Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) started this week.
 
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is expanding its service at the current labour ward to include a midwife-led unit which guarantees that women should be offered the choice of where they give birth.

“The new midwife-led facility will provide women with a maternity service that is safe, provides high quality care and offers real choice in the range of services available,” said head of midwifery, Julie Walker.

At present all of the 6,000 births a year at the hospital take place on the consultant-led labour ward.
 
The new midwife-led unit will be created by redeveloping the existing labour ward. The redesign will lead to a seven bed midwife-led unit. Also adjoining the new unit (on the same level) will be a 13-bed consultant-led labour ward which will ensure the smooth transition of patients should complications arise. With the two complexes there will be two birthing pools.

The new midwife-led unit will be called The Birth Centre and will cater for women with a low-risk pregnancy and birth. All the care will be delivered by midwives.

In the consultant-led labour ward, higher-risk women will give birth with input from a multi-disciplinary team lead by obstetricians.

The new build scheme will include the installation of a new lift linking birthing facilities with the post-natal wards in the floors above, ensuring that once women give birth they will be taken directly to the post-natal rooms to care for their babies. This will improve privacy and dignity for women and ensure their smooth transition to the post-natal wards.
 
The work will cost £1.2million and the contractors are Illingworth and Gregory Limited of Huddersfield.

The phased project, which will centre around the demands of the current labour ward set-up, is anticipated to take around 34 weeks to complete.
 
The development is part of a programme of capital improvements seen at BRI as part of the ‘Better Medicine Better Health’ corporate strategy from 2008 to 2015.