All About Me…
Where did it all begin?
My interest in working in a hospital and helping people at important times in their lives began when I was at school. I was taking all science subjects for my A-Levels and the obvious route was medicine, or dentistry as I had a Saturday job as a dental nurse at the time. However, at the age of 18 I felt too young to make a decision that would affect the rest of my life, so I did a degree in Biological Sciences instead, which kept my options open.
As I was coming to the end of my degree, and thinking about what to do in the future, I still wanted a career where I would be interacting with people. I came to the conclusion that Midwifery was the way to go, as it seemed to pull all the threads together- working with people in a clinical environment, but had that element where I would be caring for women who weren’t sick, but going through a momentous and happy time of their lives.
It was a fairly last-minute decision to apply to do another undergraduate degree for Midwifery, but to my surprise I was accepted to The Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery in London. This second undergraduate degree was made possible due to funded tuition fees and NHS Bursaries, which have now unfortunately all been cut (I won’t go on a rant about this now!). I was thrilled to be surrounded by passionate and intelligent women, majority of which were like myself who had done another degree or career before deciding to become midwives.
The next steps…
So three years flew by and before I knew it, I was qualified! And the real learning began. I completed my preceptorship (first year post-qualification) at the hospital I trained at, and then was a community-based midwife for over a year, running antenatal clinics, attending homebirths and visiting women at home after their baby is born. I enjoyed this immensely but I knew my heart lay elsewhere.
Since I started my Midwifery training, I had a fascination in clinical research and how this research translates into practice. I was surprised that this can be a relatively slow process and that current hospital guidelines for practice can be based on research from 10 years ago! So, I decided to make to move into clinical research as a research midwife.
I currently work for a leading UK University, performing a range of research projects within several hospitals. This involves recruiting women and gaining consent, sample taking and working in a laboratory. I am also involved in the development of new research strategies and projects, and need to keep myself up-to-date with cutting-edge research.
Why SmartlyPregnant.com?
Working in the NHS, the ethos is for women to make decisions about their own care based on latest evidence. This may be difficult, however, for doctors and midwives to provide this due to time-pressures, and it can be difficult for women to access this on their own if they are not familiar with scientific papers. My aim is to use my unique position as a research midwife to condense the latest research into fun and interesting articles for women to make fully-informed decisions about themselves and their babies.