Susie is currently working as our maternity quality and governance practitioner. Alongside our Consultant Midwife, Stephanie Heys, she is reviewing our maternity processes. Susie has written a blog about her career, her training, and how she has helped to develop our maternity care over the years.

“I began my career in the ambulance service in May 2006 as an emergency medical technician. I was lucky enough to be posted in Kendal where I lived at the time and where I progressed to become a paramedic in 2010. In 2013, I was thrilled to find out that I was pregnant.

“During my daughter’s early years, I completed my degree in enhanced paramedic practice and was so happy when I graduated with a first-class honours, especially whilst navigating postnatal depression during that time. 

“I continued my employment as a paramedic but couldn’t shake the birthing experience I had with my daughter. Her shoulder became stuck during birth, and her arm sustained multiple fractures to facilitate her birth.  The first time I looked at my long-awaited child, she lay lifeless in my arms. The team quickly whisked her away to another part of the hospital to attempt resuscitation whilst my husband and I were swallowed in the silence. Her birth changed my whole perspective on how I viewed the world and the care that I provided as a clinician. I promised myself that I would do all I could to support new parents in a similar position.

“She was eventually returned to me, bruised but alive and peering at me quizzically through a woollen hat. I realised then that if I’d been an ambulance clinician helping somebody in that situation, I would have been met with feelings of uncertainty and apprehension. It was at this point that I began to focus my continuous professional development on maternity and newborn care. My son was born almost two years later and came into the world with a little less fanfare – making up for that since! 

“Shortly afterwards, a colleague recommended I apply to be a lecturer for clinicians on paramedic top-up degrees in Cumbria. I applied and was successful. This meant I was teaching a post-registration programme for paramedics who were already registered with the Health and Care Professions Council and wanted to improve their prehospital skills and knowledge.

“I was able to work flexibly around my family, clinical shifts, and teaching. Alongside this, I was also working on my paediatric emergency medicine Masters and postgraduate certificate in higher education teaching. This further enabled me to develop academically, whilst teaching subjects relating to paediatric, neonatal, and maternity care. 

“I took opportunities to attend training courses focused on breech training, maternity emergencies, and work alongside midwives to educate paramedics and midwives together.  This led to me teaching midwives, paramedics, critical care teams and hospital teams all around the country. In addition, I undertook newborn life support training with the Resuscitation Council (UK) and I became a newborn life support instructor. 

“Whilst working on the road after my first maternity leave, I attended a maternity incident helping a woman who had just given birth in her car on the way to hospital. When we got there, we got mum and baby into the ambulance, dried the baby with towels and placed him skin-to-skin on his mother’s chest. It was a cold day, so we looked to the family for a hat for the baby but in the rush, everyone had forgotten her hospital bag so they had nothing – we soon discovered that our maternity packs did not contain baby hats. 

“I didn’t want this to happen again, so I got permission to work with a charity that provided 3,500 baby hats and blankets for our ambulance crews to use if needed. I have since worked closely with our Procurement Team to review our maternity packs. They now contain all the items required to help our clinicians who attend births in the community to give mum and baby the best care.

“Our Consultant Midwife, Stephanie, was appointed in 2021 and I now work very closely with her in my position as the trust’s maternity quality and governance practitioner. We share a common vision to improve the system to support the care delivery and experiences of our maternity and newborn patients.

“One of our first pieces of work together was with a team of willing NWAS clinicians to begin organising and delivering training in pregnancy-related emergencies. We spoke to the clinicians in depth to understand the experiences and confidence they had when handling maternity and newborn incidents.

“We are now developing and strengthening processes to ensure all our clinicians have the support they need to do their job well. My role has its challenges, namely that as an ambulance trust, we don’t handle maternity emergencies only – we have wider obligations to our communities. We have a large geographical footprint and we feed into around 23 maternity care services.

“Stephanie and I work together to find solutions that strengthen maternity and newborn care and are making waves. For example, we’ve worked closely with the mandatory training team, and we’ve developed content around specific themes relating to maternity and newborn care to ensure we reach as many of our clinical staff as possible. We’ve introduced a new maternity care policy for our clinicians, which clarifies what care is expected when caring for women and newborns. We’ve also introduced a protocol for staff who handle 999 calls. The protocol ensures all maternity calls handled by call handlers are flagged to a senior clinician who can give additional support and guidance to ambulance clinicians if needed so that the safest care is provided to our patients.

“In 2022, I also became part of the National Maternity Leads Group, working with maternity leads from multiple trusts nationally and began contributing to workstreams to update national guidelines and support methods to improve care.

“I am proud to work for Team NWAS, and I feel privileged to be helping to steer our care for women and newborns. My role feels purposeful and every day I can see the improvements we are making for our patients.  I can see the care that my ambulance colleagues are providing to women and their babies which will ultimately improve the experiences our patients have, and that fills me with immense pride.”