Natasha Reynolds is heavily pregnant and terrified of going into labour before she makes it to her closest hospital — two hours' drive away.
The 34-year-old mum is expecting her third child within weeks, but her home town of Chinchilla in southern Queensland has been without a proper birthing service for years.
Instead, women drive to Dalby or Toowoomba to give birth.
"What happens if it's on the side of the road? It's happened here plenty of times over the years. There've been stories of women who haven't made it in time," Ms Reynolds said.
Pregnancy complications have added to her strain leading up to delivery day.
"This is possibly my last pregnancy with all the issues and, you know, you're meant to enjoy that pregnancy," she said.
"It's been nothing but stressful."
State-wide problem
Chinchilla is the southern-most point of Queensland's vast electorate of Callide, which stretches to Biloela in the west and the outer suburbs of Gladstone in the north.
LNP state member Bryson Head said there were no birthing services at any of the 14 hospitals in his electorate.
Chinchilla Hospital has been on maternity bypass since at least 2017.
Last year, the Gladstone Hospital's maternity unit went on bypass due to a shortage of obstetricians, while Biloela Hospital also went on bypass due to specialist shortages.
"That's frankly a lot of time to fix the problem," Mr Head said.
"It tears our communities apart. We see the next generation pack up and leave because they look to their future when they want to start a family, and if there's not a maternity service they go: 'Well, we'll move elsewhere.'
"We're sick of being told that there are global problems."
Encouraging students to stay in the regions
Student nurses and midwives are set to receive a $5,000 cost-of-living allowance if they go on placements in regional Queensland, the state government announced while in Mackay for the state Labor conference on Sunday.
The funding, revealed as part of the 2023-24 state budget, is aimed at helping final-year nursing and midwifery students complete their unpaid regional placements in regional, rural and remote Queensland Health facilities.
Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said encouraging students to move to regional and rural areas, even temporarily, inspired many of them to return or stay.
"If they get a placement in regional Queensland they're much more likely to put up their hand for that permanent job," she said.
"I don't know how many health workers I've met who said 'I came here on a six-month contract and I never left, I fell in love with this regional community'.
"Once they get here, they never want to leave."
Ms Fentiman said hundreds of people had already registered their interest in the scheme as students struggle through rising cost-of-living pressures.
Many of the expressions of interest came from interstate and even overseas.
"There is a huge cost to these young people who will be the future of our health workforce," Ms Fentiman said.
"Anything we can do to make sure our students are supported through their training, to make it successfully through their training, that means we're going to have a very healthy, happy workforce caring for us when we need it most."
Treasurer Cameron Dick said about 1,000 trainees per year would be assisted by the $21.96 million scheme.
"We know the challenge to get people working in regional and remote communities," he said.
"We want to grow our workforce, we want to support the front line, and we want to help students as they complete their education."
Maternity roundtable
The state government will host a maternity roundtable later this month bringing together nurses, midwives, obstetricians, professional groups, and government officials to try to address the problem.
But not everyone is convinced a new roundtable will lead to practical solutions.
National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists president Gino Pecoraro said the last meeting in March was a "talkfest" and nothing concrete came from it.
"If this is going to come up with those same things it's a waste of everybody's time, but I'm hoping that it will be better," Dr Pecoraro said.
Dr Pecoraro said paying locum doctors more and changing the culture in maternity wards would go a long way to fixing the issues.
"[Obstetricians] want to be treated nicely, and they want to feel valued," he said.
"What that means is that obstetricians don't want to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff for when things go bad."
A 2019 report from the Queensland Rural Maternity Task Force found the rate of babies born before arriving at hospital had more than doubled since 2000, with the highest rates for women who lived between one and two hours' drive from maternity services.
It offered a range of recommendations to fix birthing services in rural and regional Queensland, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in January 2020.
Since then, hospitals have been steadily coming under further pressure, most recently in far north Queensland.
"We need to change the model of how we deliver health care to pregnant women in the regions," Dr Pecoraro said.
"That means forming a real team where obstetricians are involved during the care of the pregnancy from the very start and going through to delivery and afterwards."
Ms Fentiman, who resumed the state health portfolio from Yvette D'Ath last month, told the ABC there were pressures "right across the state on maternity services, in particular private maternity services".
"Pressures on maternity services aren't unique to Queensland, but I want Queensland to lead the way."
It has only been three months since the state government's last roundtable to deal with workforce issues, but Ms Fentiman said this second one would look "more broadly" at how to strengthen services in rural and regional areas.
"With cost-of-living pressures affecting families, sometimes private health insurance is the one thing to go, so we're really wanting to have that conversation with the federal government as well," she said.
The ABC understands Federal Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney will attend the meeting.
Darling Downs Health, which operates the Chinchilla Hospital, said it was "well progressed" on the first phase of its plan to reopen the maternity unit, and it was "working to recruit the skilled clinicians" needed to operate the ward.
