Nottingham midwives used an offensive acronym to dismiss pregnant women, BBC inquiry reveals
A BBC Panorama investigation found that midwives at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust wrote the offensive acronym 'FOH' on whiteboards beside heavily pregnant women's names to signal they wanted them to leave, and that staff were urged 'don't be too kind, she'll keep coming back.' The trust is at the centre of the largest maternity inquiry in NHS history -- led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden and due to report on 24 June -- examining the care of about 2,500 families between 2012 and 2025, including stillbirths and neonatal and maternal deaths. Chief executive Anthony May said the trust must 'take accountability.'
Midwives at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) wrote the acronym "FOH" -- a three-word obscenity meaning "off home" -- on whiteboards next to the names of heavily pregnant women to signal that they wanted them to leave the maternity unit, a BBC Panorama investigation has found. The acronym was flagged in a 2018 resignation letter from a senior midwife, seen by the programme, which also recorded a colleague advising staff to send anxious women home with the words: "Don't be too kind, she'll keep coming back."
The disclosures come as NUH -- which runs City Hospital and Queen's Medical Centre -- sits at the centre of the largest maternity inquiry in NHS history, examining the care of about 2,500 families between 2012 and 2025, including stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and injured mothers and babies. Led by the senior midwife Donna Ockenden, who is due to publish her findings on 24 June, the inquiry has pointed to a toxic culture and chronic understaffing. "Nottingham thought that there was a Nottingham way, that they were some kind of superior NHS trust," Ockenden told Panorama. The trust's current chief executive, Anthony May, who was not in post when the events occurred, said: "We need to take accountability as an organisation."
A determination to keep women at home for as long as possible before birth ran through many of the poor outcomes. One midwife described a woman told there was no need to come in when she called in labour: "When she came in, her baby was dead," and the mother suffered severe internal injuries. The 2018 letter recorded another remark overheard on the unit -- "I've never had to tell a woman so loudly, and so often, that she would kill her baby if she didn't push." Former staff described a bullying culture and understaffing so severe that, as one community midwife put it, "to be resilient you have to lower your compassion."
Sarah Hawkins, whose concerns were repeatedly ignored over six days before her daughter, Harriet, was stillborn in 2016, said the "FOH" disclosure was "quite upsetting" to hear. "The last phone call I made to a ward manager, she might as well have just said that to me," she said. "Who writes that in a caring profession?"