This staff profile features our Digital Lead Midwife, Stephanie Moss. Stephanie tells us about her unique role in helping to adapt maternity services and how the entire service has pulled together to respond to the Coronavirus pandemic…
Can you explain your role and what it involves?
I have just begun my new role as the Digital Lead Midwife. I am mainly based at RSCH but work across both sites. We are working towards improving our digital systems and becoming completely electronic. The whole of maternity care, from bookings, to labour, to discharges out in the community, will be digitised through a system called Badgernet.
We are looking forward to saying goodbye to paper documentation and stepping into the 21st century!
What were you doing before and how has your role changed in recent weeks?
I’ve been a midwife at BSUH for 9 years now. I spent my first 4 years in the hospital consolidating my practice and becoming a sign off mentor before leaving to join the community team, where I spent another 4 years.
In the 6 months leading up to my new role I was in a secondment post as the Quality Improvement Midwife, rolling out electronic observations in maternity. This was a good first step into introducing digitisation to the team and to get them ready for changes to come.
What has been most challenging?
Having been a clinical midwife for many years it was hard to transition into a non-clinical role, working alongside the IT team and having to attend regular board meetings and conferencing. The learning curve was steep, but I’ve enjoyed tackling new challenges and developing new skills.
During my role as the quality improvement midwife I found that getting staff on board and engaged with change was a tricky sea to navigate! Fortunately I had great support and mentors to learn from.
What achievements are you most proud of?
Becoming the Digital Lead Midwife is an exciting venture, especially as it is a role that has not yet existed. I am fortunate to be able to shape the role to suit the needs of the department and the Trust.
I am most proud of my colleagues particularly with 2020 the year of the nurse and midwife.
Obviously this is a very worrying time for our clients and the maternity staff have been working tirelessly to continue to support our pregnant and newly delivered community virtually.
We have a dedicated COVID phone line manned by shielding midwives and a team who took the initiative to ensure all of our resources are available on our social media accounts. Some of our clinics have moved over to video conferencing platforms and are being utilised by midwives, specialist midwives (such as the infant feeding support midwife) and the obstetric team.
It is so great to see all the staff coming together, supporting each other and adapting quickly to new ways of working.
