31/07/2024
What motivated you to pursue a career at South West Acute Hospital?
“I qualified as a midwife in the summer of 2012 and applied to the Western Health and Social Care Trust. I was kindly invited in for a walk around the maternity ward at the South West Acute Hospital and immediately knew it felt welcoming, friendly and professional with lots of career progression opportunities. I have been here ever since and never looked back!”
Could you share a significant challenge you’ve faced in your role and how you overcame it to provide quality healthcare services?
“Within midwifery, we can face daily challenges due to the high acuity and fast paced work load. However, we come together as a team and help each other where we can to ensure safe delivery of services. My role as practice development midwife and clinical educator is to ensure we continuously are up to date with evidence based guidance and best practice which can be sometimes challenging in itself. We are in a lifelong learning career so we always embrace change that promotes high quality care for women and their families. Again, I have a multidisciplinary team supporting my role and work together well to ensure those changes are implemented timely and monitored closely. Our team are passionate, kind and caring therefore are enthusiastic to keep up to date with education and training programmes.”
How do you believe your role contributes to the well-being and recovery of patients within our community?
“My role promotes best practice that is evidence based and within regional and national recommendations based on high level research, therefore we strive to deliver safe effective maternity care. This will promote wellbeing and recovery for our service users. In addition, facilitating training programmes in house and encouraging others to continue lifelong learning promotes safe care. One aspect of my role is to organise and run ‘emergency drills’ where we come together as a team to deal with obstetric emergencies so we are always prepared and skilled in managing these in a calm and timely matter, again, ensuring optimal safety for women and new-borns. As a valued member of the multidisciplinary team, I am involved in monitoring care and review outcomes frequently which our unit always aims to improve where we can.”
Can you highlight a particular patient interaction or medical achievement that you are particularly proud of, and why?
“There are a few interactions and achievements that come to mind that I am proud of. As a specialist midwife I am not always in the clinical areas day to day, but when I am I thoroughly enjoy service user interaction as pregnancy and childbirth are often joyous occasions. I am blessed to be in the position to bring upon change to the unit. This might include introductions of tools to minimise risk and when you review the data and know it makes a difference that really is something to be proud of. All change is a team effort though, and it wouldn’t be without all tiers of staff within SWAH Maternity it could happen, so really overall, I am proud to work with the team we have here.”
How do you ensure the delivery of compassionate and effective care in your specific healthcare discipline?
“By always treating everyone I meet in a way I would like to be treated is how I ensure compassionate care. Actively listening to women, their families and staffs opinions matters the most.”
What aspect of your work do you find most rewarding, and how does it resonate with your personal values and mission?
“Another aspect of my role is to meet with and work alongside our newly qualified midwives. When you meet them as midwifery students and watch them grow and develop into registrants, that’s extremely rewarding so I will nurture new staff to ensure they feel supported, heard and developed to experienced midwives. The unit has a robust preceptorship and progression programme that I will ensure the newly qualified midwives have access to and work towards completing their competencies by aiding resources, teaching and clinical support with. My mission is to have a team who always feel supported to progress in their professional careers. In terms of clinical care, the most rewarding is working in partnership with women and promoting choice during their pregnancy and birth journey to promote a safe and healthy outcome. An important value of mine, and the midwifery team is the promotion of midwifery led care services and birth. My professional mission will always be to continually promote our outstanding midwifery led birthing suite here at the SWAH. With two birthing pools available, the unit recently facilitated a fabulous water birth update day which was positively received by midwives. Ongoing training and education enables our team to care for women labouring and birthing in our alongside birthing suite, which includes provision of water births, mobilisation and active births.”
How do you manage the demands of your job, and what strategies do you employ to ensure exceptional healthcare service delivery?
“As a lone role worker due to being a specialist midwife, I optimise time management as much as possible and always aim to be ahead of my work load. A lot of planning and administrations preparation allows me to do this. The main strategy for me is attending all multidisciplinary meetings to ensure I am meeting my targets, up to date and informing colleagues of any changes or upcoming training programmes. Regular monthly meetings with my line manager that is protected, allows us to review what our priorities are, therefore employing exceptional delivery of service needs.”
Have there been any mentors or colleagues who have significantly influenced your practice, and in what way?
“In the years I have been employed in SWAH maternity, I have worked with so many colleagues that would warrant a mention! Each midwife always teaches you something new, we all come with knowledge and skill sets that we can learn from each other. As a junior midwife, a particular midwifery sister was my role model. She was always calm, professional and cared for women in such a compassionate manner that can’t be taught. From that I have learned, it’s not always about formal teaching and development, but how we go about our day can hugely influence others from observation and interaction alone. She influenced my passion in midwifery led care at the beginning and from then, colleagues influence my practice every day as we continuously seek ways to develop and maintain midwifery led care.”
What are your aspirations for the future, and how do you envision the evolution of your role within South West Acute Hospital?
“My aspiration for the future is to continue developing maternity services to meet service users’ needs and desires. Midwifery is ever evolving with high level evidence being produced daily and my role would be to continue to implement best practice.”
How do you believe your efforts contribute to the overall excellence and advancement of healthcare services in our local community?
“Being in the practice development role gives me the optimal opportunity to contribute to the advancement of services in maternity. Being at the height of education within our department, I believe my efforts in providing local teaching as well as producing clear guidelines and policies will standardise practice and continue to develop midwives as autonomous practitioners and enhance midwifery led care.”