At every other conference that I've attended in the past as a delegate, I've flitted from plenary to poster and presentation with no real agenda in mind. It's been a bit of a luxury where I have indulged my midwifery practice whims. I've always come away from conference however feeling invigorated and revitalized with lots of ideas and new contacts but to my shame have neglected to follow up the contacts and allowed them to collect fluff in the bottom of my Eco friendly conference bag with all the new ideas subsequently floating away... It was going to be different this time! I didn't want to come away with the usual post conference inactivity and had a much clearer set of tasks; (I do love a good list).
- Make valuable contacts who I can seriously collaborate for the duration of the project and actually email them and stay in touch afterwards.
- Support the fabulous work of my colleagues who were presenting at the conference on behalf of Portsmouth Hospitals and Bournemouth University. It's about time we celebrated their achievements!
- Identify currently up and running care pathways for pregnant obese women and explore possibility of implementing them for the benefit of local women.
- Evaluate the quality of poster presentations and figure out if my early stages of research could be incorporated into a poster for future conferences.
- Consider my supervisory PREP requirements and attend supervision sessions that may be useful for feeding back to my supervisory team.
- Collect as many pens as possible.
One of the first and most enlightening plenary sessions that I attended was one by Dr Cate bell Discussing her research about women's experience of excellence in midwifery care and what makes an excellent midwife; a status that I'm sure many aspire to. She was able to summarise her research using a visual representation of the midwife's moral compass, within it was highlighted some of the qualities identified by women that elevated the standard of care to excellent. Those qualities included:
- Making women feel individual and special, care isn't just about the doing elements but the being elements
- Listening skills and the importance of active listening
- Excellent midwives are clearly adaptable to the type of care required and can individualize their care with ease.
- A strong desire to do your best.
Some of the stronger moral qualities appeared to hold more influence of women's experience of excellence and these qualities discussed the moral being and living midwifery that embodied some midwives. The character and personality was likened to a star quality that was specific to a midwife and deeply rooted. These characteristics were thought to be skills that were hard to teach but could be learned such as:
- Belief in the specialness of birth
- An honest appreciation uniqueness of birth and maintenance of enthusiasm for each and every woman.
- Respect trust and value when sharing information and supporting decision making.
- A deep personal motivation and love of the Job.
Overall this session was the kind that left me feeling quite warm and fuzzy and a desire to get back to work!
So after that it was back down to earth with a bump, it was time for the politicians.... Funnily enough I had a deep rooted desire to reach for a remote control in an effort to switch them off but I am painfully aware that I have to develop political awareness in order to be able to get stuck into influencing guidelines and policy. I therefore grudgengly paid attention and listened to questions from the audience with the replies from the politicians delivered in a predictable evasive style... Not quite so fuzzy now... I think they could have learned a few lessons from Cate....
In between attending sessions, I had also embarked on my mission of picking up as many pens and freebies as possible (as I am a student!) and it was during this time that I stumbled upon an amazing contact... I was lucky dipping in the bounty pack bin and the lovely lady attending the display just happened to be involved in care pathways for obese pregnant women. I discovered this when she handed me a booklet regarding pregnancy nutrician. I noted her details and followed this up by contacting her via the ongoing #rcmconf13 twitter feed. This also proved to be a great resource and the first time I had engaged in proper grown up twitter involvement/activity. People were commenting during plenary sessions from the audience and using this platform as an opportunity to express their opinions, fascinating and almost as liberating as heckling with some degree of anonymity.
My twitter feed can be found here for anyone interested:
http://twitter.com/midwifecarol
Lots of other interesting things to look at too in the exhibition hall, like this rather impressive collection of knitted boobs.....
As a direct link to the research in my field I clearly planned to attend sessions that would consider maternal obesity. During the course of the conference I soon realised that sometimes ideas emerge from the most unexpected of places. A talk from the NSPCC discussing a mental health paper highlighted that the leading cause of maternal death according to the CMACE report is suicide. I had read a paper last week about the link between depression and obesity and I had a little lightbulb moment. I feel it is vital to include this link as part of my proposal development and certainly as a consideration to background information as part of my thesis.
A particularly interesting session was led by 2 midwives from Doncaster, Carolyn Garland and Alison Williams who discussed a project that they started and set up in their local trust. A great deal of consideration had been given to planning the service with a great deal of success. I listened, took details and have actually emailed and followed up this contact in preparation for a study day that they will be holding next year on the 3rd April. The study day will look at how to set up a similar service in your own area. It would appear that Doncaster also has a higher than national average obesity rate much like Portsmouth. I came away with lots of ideas and a few clues about how to avoid some of the pitfalls. Simple things like calling the midwives 'healthy lifestyle midwives' rather than obesity midwives (that could be tricky!) Or the idea of calling the clinic the Monday clinic rather than a label that could put people off and let's face it, all the best diets start on a Monday!
In the posters section of the conference I found a piece of work that I could take back to to my supervisors looking at the latent phase of labour and the use of oramorph. Therein was good evidence to show the real benefits to women when managing their pain at home at this difficult time and definately a consideration for our team of supervisors.
Overall I was very proud to be a Portsmouth Midwife and a Bournemouth University student, we showcased just a little bit of the fabulous work that we do but I think we could be much better at showing off! I think we are clearly far too modest!
So, that's my list done. I found my time at the conference truly inspiring and the evenings at the guest house amusing as I was sharing one room with 3 other midwives to keep the costs down (was like a school dorm!) The icing on the cake had to be winning the 'who can collect the most pens competition'.....
That should keep me going for the next 4 years :-)
