Maternity assistants support better care for patients

Good Hope Hospital is pioneering the development of better ways to help mothers have their babies. New maternity care assistants are now working with midwives – giving the midwives more time to support mothers and ensure babies are safe and well.

The hospital’s work on developing the new roles is now being assessed as part of a national programme for redesigning midwifery services – with a view to introducing maternity care assistants at other hospitals across the country.

Maternity care assistants have been trained to do many basic tasks midwives currently do – including carrying out clerical duties, health checks, taking clinical samples and advising mothers on parenting skills.

This has freed up midwives to concentrate more on using their clinical skills to look after the medical needs of mothers and their babies.

Maggie Coleman, Head of Midwifery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, at Good Hope Hospital NHS Trust, said: “This means our midwives can work more effectively and give better care to more mothers and babies.

“We’ve assessed the impact of introducing maternity care assistants in our antenatal clinic and found that they have released 22% of midwifery time for extra clinical duties, reduced patient complaints, cut waiting times and reduced our costs because we need to use fewer agency nurses.

“The 14 maternity care assistants we have trained so far were previously auxiliary nurses – and the extra skills and responsibilities their now have gives them greater job satisfaction.

“This is a real win-win-win situation, it’s better for the hospital, better for staff but most important of all, it’s better for parents and their babies.”

As part of the process of developing the new job roles, an assessment was carried out to ensure the hospital chose the most effective option both in terms of benefit for mothers and babies and cost.

The new role has lead to Good Hope developing a new National Vocational Qualification – with two levels for candidates to achieve.

Trudy Gibson is one of the first maternity care assistants to work in the community as well as the hospital. She said: “My dual role allows me to see women through from pregnancy to postnatal. It provides better continuity of care.”

For more information, contact Andy Comber, Head of Communications, at Good Hope NHS Trust: 0121 378 2211 ext 1146, Mob: 07974 575104.

The new role of maternity care assistant has been created at Good Hope as part of a national project to develop what are called maternity support workers. The scheme is being managed through the Care Services Improvement Partnership, an NHS organisation set up to improve the way care is delivered.

An evaluation team will visit Good Hope and talk to maternity care assistants, managers, clinicians, midwives, parents and commissioning primary care trusts to assess the impact of the changes on services.

There are three other hospitals in Birmingham and the Black Country piloting maternity support workers – the Birmingham Women’s Hospital, New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton and Walsall Manor Hospital. In total, 54 hospitals across the country are involved in the scheme.

Source : Good Hope