Our Idea

In Northern Ireland we have a well established Maternity Quality Improvement collaborative which to date has focused on in patient acute maternity issues. We have been very successful in engaging Obstetricians, midwives, managers and women in this improvement approach agreeing regional approaches to a range of care interventions for example the development of a regional early obstetric warning score (now on its 3rd version) and CTG evaluation system. 

We would now like to now expand our reach to include community midwifery staff and pump prime this with a QI training programme which would build capacity and capability in the community setting and also allow us to run a range of improvement initiatives on community vital signs, bladder care and perineal wound care. 

Context

Midwives provide care and support to women and their families while pregnant, throughout labour and during the period after a baby’s birth. Midwives and the care they provide to women, babies and families are of the utmost importance to society.

Mothers and their babies and families need to be provided with an antenatal and postnatal care service that identifies and responds, in a structured and systematic way, to their individual physical, psychological, emotional and social needs, and which is based on the best possible evidence. Midwives in the community ensure the same high standard of safe and quality care for all mothers and their babies, while acknowledging they will all have different needs. Community midwives role is vital in responding to women’s experiences of care which will drive quality improvement of antenatal and postnatal care in the community for women.

Plan  

We would envisage 5/6 community  midwives per Trust with an overall total of 30 participants in the programme.  The programme will give staff an opportunity to understand QI methodology including data analysis and human factors training and engage them as champions, sharing the learning with their teams so as QI becomes part of everyone’s job.

We would allocate mentors from within the existing maternity collaborative to support these individuals as they start off on their improvement journey.  

Benefits to Q community and locally

• Build a network of community midwives who can lead on quality improvement initiatives and act as mentors to others in the future
• Acknowledging and addressing increasing complexity of women being cared for by community teams
• We would envisage recruiting these community midwives into the Q community and the establishment of a SIG to help share the learning and expand the network