Call to give pregnant women the chance to visit maternity ward

Pregnant women should be allowed on to labour wards to look around before giving birth, experts said as it emerged that many Scottish hospitals have stopped letting them in.

Health boards said risks from infection and patient confidentiality had led them to abandon the tours, instead replacing them with DVDs and virtual tours online. But Belinda Phipps, chair of the National Childbirth Trust, said in most cases it was a “lack of will” stopping hospitals offering the tours, which she said helped prepare women for going in to have their baby.

A survey of health boards by The Scotsman showed a postcode lottery in the provision of labour ward tours as part of antenatal classes across the country.

NHS Ayrshire and Arran, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Highland, Shetland and Western Isles all said they continued to let couples into wards to make them familiar with the setting.

Policy on labour ward tours varied within some boards, including in NHS Tayside where in some cases tours were allowed through antenatal classes or on an individual basis in some units, but no formal tours took place elsewhere.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde stopped doing tours at its Glasgow maternity wards earlier this year, although physical tours of the community midwifery units at Inverclyde Royal Hospital and Vale of Leven are continuing. But other areas had a blanket policy of not offering couples tours of units, instead providing DVDs or web-based virtual tours.

NHS Borders said it had also stopped offering group tours, with virtual tours on its website or individual tours if patients were particularly anxious.

NHS Forth Valley said it also stopped tours to help with infection control and respect patient confidentiality and dignity. It now offers a virtual tour online.

NHS Grampian said it stopped tours because of patient confidentiality and infection control, while NHS Orkney provides them only when the ward is not being used. NHS Lothian and NHS Lanarkshire also do not provide tours.

Ms Phipps said if maternity units wanted to offer tours, they could usually find a way of doing it safely and without disrupting patients. She said the tours could actually make midwives’ lives easier as people would know where the things they needed were and did not need to bother staff as much when they were in early labour.

The Royal College of Midwives said it did not believe staffing reasons were stopping tours going ahead in Scotland and those that did not offer them had good reasons.