By Miyo Padi
The Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Hospital in Margate and William Harvey Hospital in Ashford each unveiled a new enhanced maternity care (EMC) room this week.
Located within the labour ward, the areas will serve as a dedicated space for maternity patients who need an enhanced level of care but do not require critical care. Where those patients previously had to leave the labour ward for care elsewhere in the hospitals, they will now be able to remain with their babies on the ward.
The rooms feature specialist equipment, including newly installed maternity-configured cardiac monitors and a specially designed EMC chart for patient monitoring.
The culmination of years of work by maternity teams across both sites, the initiative has also meant hundreds of East Kent Hospitals’ midwives received additional training over the last few months.
Dr Clare Redfearn, clinical lead for the EMC project at QEQM, said: “A small proportion of women may become critically unwell during their pregnancy, birth or soon after. For them to have the multi-professional team care for them in a fully equipped space so they can remain with their baby whilst receiving dedicated and specialist care is going to make such a difference.
“It will enhance the experience of women and birthing people by reducing separation from their babies and in turn any associated psychological trauma.
“The demographic of our birthing population is increasing in complexity and we are caring for more women with medical co-morbidities. Now we have equipped our midwives with the additional skills, provided the space, and the specialist equipment to fully support a new EMC pathway.”
In preparation for the provision of EMC care, East Kent Hospitals has designed and delivered an in-house course to over 200 of its midwives. One hundred specialist EMC midwives have also completed regional Maternity Enhanced Care Unit (MECU) training.
One of the midwives who took the additional training, Louisa Rule, said: “I have been a midwife now for seven years, and a lot has changed. Our women are becoming more and more high-risk, so this was really needed.”
Maternity Improvement & Transformation Programme Manager Leanne Jeffrey served as project manager across both sites, while the project was clinically-led at William Harvey Hospital by Dr Christina Aung, Dr Michelle Walters, and midwifery ward manager Sarah Harris.
Let’s hope it is a genuine thing, rather than purely a PR driven, new coat of paint lip service-like their prior responses to the East Kent maternity scandals. The women have become more high-risk overwhelmingly from the ‘care’ they have received.
From my experience, as a former manager of maternity services elsewhere, and a more recent witness to the severe shortcomings of our local maternity care, what is needed is not about improved physical facilities, welcome though these may be, but a culture change in the way the service is provided.
Our maternity services need:-
Midwives and Obstetricians working together as a single team.
24/7 availability, on site, to consultant Obstetricians and Anaesthetists to manage delivery emergencies
An Obs/Gynaecologust with a special interest in Maternity care.
Midwife Managed Care accepting that not everything goes to ‘plan’ and with humility to bring in other staff, especially Obstetricians, the minute complications arise.
Listen – properly listen – to what the woman is telling you.