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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

See attached job description

• To improve the standard of fetal monitoring in line with the recommendations from the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle V3.
• To support staff to provide high quality intrapartum risk assessments and accurate CTG interpretation with the aim of building and sustaining a safety culture within the Maternity Unit with all staff committed to continuous improvement.
• To provide professional leadership across all aspects of fetal monitoring working alongside lead obstetricians, the Midwifery leadership team, maternity governance team, consultant midwife and the Practice Education team to improve birth outcomes associated with fetal monitoring. This would include creating learning opportunities within the clinical environments and maintaining communication between teams.
• Support and work with the teams across the Maternity department to develop a programme plan to facilitate the implementation of a clinically based teaching and competency-based assessment package to aim towards achieving better birth outcomes.
• The aim of this role and programme is to build upon and further positively influence the current practice of achieving healthy birth outcomes for babies who are born at WHT.
• The post holder will lead and facilitate a programme aimed at equipping both midwives and obstetricians to increase their knowledge and competence in identifying fetal well-being, potential fetal compromise and actual fetal compromise in all clinical settings and improve clinical decision making.
• Develop staff’s awareness in recognising pathophysiological factors that could contribute to misinterpretation of the fetal heart pattern. This will be relevant when using both intermittent auscultations plotted on a partogram and electronic monitoring using a cardiotocographs (CTGs).
• Develop and expand midwives' competence in undertaking intermittent auscultation of the fetal heart when caring for low-risk women as per NICE guidelines, utilising the most current and robust evidence-based practice.
• Ensure staff can intelligently auscultate the fetal heart in labour in the midwifery led unit and at home reflective in the documentation and increase confidence in staff in auscultating the fetal heart intermittently using either a pinard or handheld sonicaid.
• Ensure the relevant staff are assessing fetal well-being appropriately using the entire context of the woman's general health, pregnancy, gestation and stage of labour.
• Support staff in enhancing their fetal monitoring skills aiming to work towards reducing, identifying and escalating risk within clinical practice.
• Take the lead role in supporting the development of a safety culture within the context of resource constraints and multiple conflicting priorities in relation to fetal monitoring.
• Work with our Senior Midwifery team to facilitate staff in developing and applying reflective practice skills.
• Review current fetal monitoring training packages and educational resources. In partnership with the Maternity Matrons, Maternity Governance team, Practice Development Midwives, Obstetricians and local training and education boards/ networks, develop creative ways of learning. This will build upon what currently works well in conjunction with innovation in using other opportunities and different methods/ways to improve learning.
• Work in collaboration with and support of the Delivery Suite Coordinators, Obstetricians, Maternity Matrons, Practice Development Midwives, all midwives and Community Midwifery Lead/Midwives.
• Provide on a regular basis both constructive and positive feedback and identify and disseminate learning from good outcomes.
• Working with the Delivery Suite and Fetal Monitoring Lead Consultant Obstetricians, Maternity Matrons, Maternity Governance team, Ward Managers, Community Leads to develop a comprehensive training and competency testing package to give assurance that all staff responsible for fetal assessment and wellbeing are competent. This must be electronically archived and directly accessible for audit or recoding purposes.
• Act as a role model demonstrating clinical leadership and midwifery expertise
• Take part in the maternity manager on call rota.