RATIOS For Midwifery Workforce Planning at National, Regional and Local Level

Introduction and overview

Birthrate Plus is a robust and credible workforce planning tool for midwives. It has a long track record in enabling managers to measure the work and time involved in providing high quality maternity services and translating this into staffing numbers. It has now been endorsed by NICE as a workforce planning tool that can assist with implementing the recommendations in the NICE guideline for safe midwifery staffing.

Assessing staffing needs in all aspects of midwifery care is achieved by recording midwifery workload in both hospital and community over a minimum of 3 months and applying hours of midwife time for each area based upon the BR+ methodology.

It includes the following:

  • For hospital services: antenatal clinics, antenatal admissions, women attending triage and day care services, ward attenders and those receiving different lengths of postnatal care.
  • Case Mix: Identifying the case mix of the local population using the BR+ validated scoring tool following birth.
  • For community care: antenatal care including the initial screening and booking for place of birth, parent education, postnatal care depending upon the length of hospital stay after delivery and all aspects of care for women having a home birth
    For further information contact: Marie Washbrook