A MIDWIFE who was rapped for her treatment of a mum while she was delivering her dead baby has been allowed to return to work.

Paula Grant, 55, left the devastated woman – known as Mrs B – alone for long periods and snapped at her when she questioned why she would have to give birth in a blood-spattered room, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

Grant told the woman – whose baby had died in the womb – she would be in “excruciating pain” while delivering the child.

The hearing was also told Grant said the situation was just as traumatic for her as it was for the patient.

Grant was found guilty of a string of blunders while working as the lead midwife at Basildon Hospital during 2006 and 2007.

However, despite the failings, the midwifery council did not strike Grant, of Presidents Drive, Laindon, off the nursing register, and she is now fit to return to work as a midwife.

Grant also tried to bully junior midwife Dolly Hewett into recording a baby girl born at 20 weeks gestation was stillborn, when she had been alive and moving for some time after she was handed to her parents.

When Miss Hewett refused to do so, Grant signed the form herself.

She later locked Miss Hewett in a room and demanded to know what she had said when she heard a complaint had been made about her.

Grant was suspended from her job at the hospital following patient and staff complaints, and was later reported to the midwifery council.

She was found guilty of all charges by the midwifery council which ruled her actions amounted to misconduct.

Yet after hearing about the corrective steps Grant had taken since the incidents, the midwidfery panel ruled her fitness to practice was not impaired.

Chairman Lesley White said: “The misconduct of the registrant revealed her, at the time, as someone who was behaving arrogantly and impatiently with junior members of staff and patients.

“The panel considers she has addressed this unfortunate poor performance.

“If it did not, it would have no hesitation in finding the registrant’s fitness to practice to be impaired.

“Quite why she behaved in the way she did, the panel cannot say.

“But it does accept the consequences of her behaviour represented a profound wake-up call to the registrant.”

Speaking about the incident with Mrs B, Grant told the hearing she did not tell the patient the experience would be as traumatic for her.

Yet she conceded: “I should have just said, ‘I am sorry for your loss’.

“It was wrong and I am sorry.”

Grant no longer works at Basildon Hospital.