'Midwifery is a job that requires kindness' - IDM 2022
This International Day of the Midwife, Rachel Harris, patient experience midwife at The Royal London, speaks about journey of progress in her career.
"Midwifery is a job that requires kindness, compassion and drive for improvements. It is the most precious time for a family, so we aim to connect with women in our community and continuously improve our service. We have established a great relationship with maternity voice partnerships, children’s centres and maternity mates. This means that we have been able to work together to create a service where women can provide feedback their experience and what they would like. This is helped by a dedicated patient experience midwife appointed to advocate for our women.
"Through the pandemic, we have continued to care for our women in the hospital and community settings. Our senior team continuously reviewed our policies to ensure they aligned with government guidance and our team adapted to meet the needs of our women.
"For example, our parent education midwife adapted her antenatal class to an online class, to ensure that women remain educated and prepared for their birth despite Covid 19. Some of our community midwives provided online Q&A over social media and continued to visit our women and babies at home using PPE. Our staff have continued to come to work even with lower staffing level - which displays their dedication to our women. In fact, during the pandemic from April 2021 - March 2022 we delivered 5072 babies! This is a huge amount and it means we are now able to recruit more specialist midwives to advance the care we provide.
"We are a wonderful team and we are proud of all that we have achieved."