Overview:

In this webinar, Principal Investigators Dr Claire Feeley and Prof Soo Downe will discuss the launch of a new study looking to try a new approach when considering the current NHS maternity crisis.

We know that safe, high-quality maternity care is an essential component of healthcare provision to ensure the wellbeing of mothers, birthing people and their babies. However, there are known challenges and struggles to deliver this consistently and equitably. Our project seeks to explore these issues with a different focus. Specifically, to identify and learn from successes in maternity care - ‘what goes right’ - to see if reframing the issues can generate key lessons that could drive national improvements. Find out more here.

We will be joined by Ellen Thaels, the Research Assistant for the project who will share her expertise regrading ‘high-quality maternity care.

Speakers:

Dr Claire Feeley is a Lecturer of Midwifery at King’s College London with an emphasis on research within her role. As an experienced clinical midwife, educator and researcher, Claire specialises in physiological birth across the risk spectrum, water immersion, human rights framework, midwifery practice, skill and competence - all within a sociocultural-political lens. Claire’s personal research has included freebirthing, midwives supporting out of guidelines normal birth care with numerous collaborations in a wider range of topic areas i.e. assisted vaginal birth, experiences of pharmacological/non-pharmacological pain relief methods, water immersion outcomes and experiences, parents' psychosocial needs during neonatal unit care, patient and public involvement during innovation and continuity of care implementation.

Ellen is a Clinical Academic Midwife. After she finished her Masters in Midwifery (MSc) at the University of Leuven (Belgium) Ellen moved to London to work as a midwife. She works in the St Mary’s hospital Birth Centre, which is part of Imperial College NHS Trust. Furthermore, she is one of the co-directors and workshop facilitators of the Midwifery Unit Network. In October 2019, she was awarded with a PhD Fellowship from the University of Central Lancashire, supervised by Prof. Soo Downe. She submitted her thesis with the title: 'How is quality of care conceptualised by the different constituencies involved in maternity care in the UK? An organisational ethnography'. Ellen will be working with Dr Claire Feeley on the BEACON project as a Research Associate, within Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care at King’s College London.

Soo is a midwife with a particular research focus on the nature of, and cultures around, normal birth. Soo has undertaken research using a wide range of methods, from phenomenology and ethnography to surveys, RCTs, and epidemiological analysis of large data sets. As well as undertaking research, she is a Professor of Midwifery Studies and teaches on both undergraduate and postgraduate research programmes. She regularly works with the World Health Organisation and with other research, practice, and public health leaders in maternity care around the world.

About Midwifery and Maternity Health Research Group

The Midwifery & Maternal Health Research Group is developing a programme of high-quality research to foster improvements to the delivery, outcomes and experiences of maternity care services. Our research is underpinned by the Lancet’s Midwifery framework for quality maternal and newborn care (QMNC). The QMNC is based on a definition of midwifery which encompasses skills, attitudes and behaviours, rather than specific professional roles. Therefore, while rooted in midwifery practice, our work goes beyond professional boundaries to centre childbearing women, people and their families.

Staff work within the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, in close collaboration with the Life Course Sciences Women & Children’s Health Department. We are also forging research networks and collaborations with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and Philosophy & Medicine. Additionally, the team bring their existing wider networks, service-user and clinician partnerships and collaborations that will develop and enhance the research profile.

We bring together our diverse but inter-related fields of interest. These have previously included modifiable risk factors for stillbirth, maternity care experiences for those who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, midwifery practices in facilitating complex physiological birth and improving maternity care for women with pre-existing medical conditions. Together, our work will continue to consider the outcomes and experiences of those receiving care, and those delivering care to address some of the key issues facing maternity services today - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/midwifery-maternal-health.