The Catalan Association of Midwives has warned this Wednesday of the deficit of these professionals in Cataloniawhere it is expected that by the end of 2022 190 will retire and only 73 new residents will be trained, so that only 38.4% of the retired places will be covered.
On the occasion of the International Day of the Midwife, which is celebrated every May 5, the association has warned that this trend will continue in the coming yearssince in the period up to 2026 they estimate that 47% would remain uncovered of vacancies due to retirement.
The reason for this lack of midwives lies in the absence of training offer that there was in Spain between 1987 and 1995due to difficulties in the process of homologation of the title in the European sphere after the country entered the then called European Economic Community.
Lack of new generations of midwives
In the next years midwives trained before 1987 will retire and the training offer and current places that are offered will not be enough to ensure generational change, the organization has warned.
In Catalonia, 69 places were offered to do the residency in 2021, less than those of 2010, which were 77. In all of Spain, the offer of midwife vacancies in the last 11 years has decreased by 38 places.
Thus, Catalonia welcomes more than 50% of residents from outside the communityaccording to data from the last three promotions (up to 67.1% in 2021), but they are professionals that, after completing their training, They mostly return to their populations originally.
“The training of midwives has been clearly insufficient in recent years and the lack of professionals derived from the suspension of midwifery studies for years has not been taken into account, which entails a serious threat to our profession”, denounced the president of the Catalan Association of Midwives, Gemma Falguera.
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Therefore, the association claims that hospitals convene all accredited places -Mar, Parc Taulí and Mataró have not done so-, that they offer one extra place per year between 2023 and 2028 to add 26 new midwives and increase the offer by 11 more, during the same period, in those centers that today already attend between 400 and 1,000 deliveries each year.
“This it wouldn’t be enough to reach the desired number of midwives, but at least it would make it possible to compensate for the current situation”, Falguera indicated.