Our midwives here at CHFT are being supported by 9 new Professional Midwifery Advocates (PMAs), supporting them to achieve the most out of their jobs.
Midwives can access support from any of CHFT’s Professional Midwifery Advocates - see all the names below - (PMA) through a model called A-EQUIP.
- A-EQUIP is a continuous improvement process that builds: personal and professional resilience, enhances quality of care for women and babies and supports preparedness for appraisal and professional revalidation
- The Equip approach aims to ensure that through staff development, action to improve quality of care becomes an intrinsic part of everyone’s job, every day, in all parts of the system
The restorative clinical supervision element of the model has been shown to cause: less burnout and staff leaving us, less sickness absence and stress related absence, skills and expertise retained, less complaints and litigation, improved health & wellbeing, better resilience to deal with emotional burden of the role and focus on professional standards and increased job satisfaction.
The PMAs at CHFT are available to support staff in their roles in providing excellent care to women and their families and that staff also feel cared for. They also see the role as providing the time and space to celebrate successes, offer time for reflection on any challenges facing the service and support midwives to make changes. The PMA role nicely interlinks with the Trust wellbeing ethos.
Head of Midwifery, Joyce Ayre, said: “The PMA role is key in that it provides visible leadership promoting safe, effective evidence based care through role modelling and supporting our 268 midwives to identify personal actions to improve the quality of care for woman and their families.
"PMAs use the A-Equip model to focus on development and training, personal action and restorative clinical supervision. This supports midwives to feel valued, focus and develop their professional career aspirations, providing a safe space to reflect on what has gone well, what could have gone better and what could they change to improve the service in the future. It isn’t just about the difficult situations our staff sometimes have to face, it is also about reflecting when things go really well and could be shared more widely for colleagues to learn and to improve the service”
This role has been introduced at maternity units throughout the country as part of the national maternity transformation aimed at improving maternity services.
Our CHFT PMAs are: Joyce Ayre, Jo Machon, Elaine Brotherton, Emma Burbidge, Karen Spencer, Kathy Kershaw, Louise Howarth, Michelle Jones and Nicola Ingle. Any of them can be contacted for support.