Clinical Trials

I would probably suggest that they thought about their own situation and whether they had the mental headspace for it. And, and think about what they themselves would get out of it, and possibly think carefully about what, what that trial might actually, might or might not show. I think the days when you can just rely on people, no disrespect, but rely on researchers to be doing good work and doing the right thing, like you can rely on - you probably can’t rely on healthcare workers to do the right thing always. I think those days are, are kind of gone. So I think you, it pays to actually have a sense, more of a sense of what’s actually going on. Otherwise it’s a waste of your time and it can actually be counterproductive.

 

 

I would, but I would look into it a bit more, I think. I think I probably wouldn’t if it was in a acute situation. I mean, I’m not having any more children, so it wouldn’t be on the ward having just given birth again. But if I was in A & E, for example, or, you know, one of my kids was ill, I probably would say, “No thanks. I’m, you know, actually I’m, I’m in my life at the moment and I haven’t really got the wherewithal to deal with all this, to evaluate whether this is worth getting involved with or not.” 

I felt everything had gone really well and he was feeding fine, and I was hoping to be able to go home. And the midwife on the ward came round and I said to her, “I’d really like to go home as soon as possible. I’m happy with the way everything is. I’m really keen to just go home.” And she said, “Okay”, she would try to do everything she could to make that happen.

 

And she had some information to give me, which I was quite sure I pretty much knew it all because I’d had a child already. So I knew all about breastfeeding and I knew I was going to breastfeed, and I knew about changing nappies, I knew about meningitis and I knew about all these things. So I was very much, “No, I don’t need that. I’ll be fine.” And she was happy to go along with that. So she was listening to what I was saying and acting on it.

 

So just after lunch we were almost ready to go and somebody came round, a nurse by background, who asked if I’d be happy to take part in an audit that she was conducting about the delivery of information to women immediately after birth. So I said, “Yeah, of course, fine, whatever.” And she then started asking me questions about the information that I’d had. And the way she did it [laughs] was to test me about the contents of the information. So she asked me if I knew what the signs of a hungry baby were. And of course I’d just given birth, I’d had no sleep. And I knew I knew how to recognise a hungry baby, but I couldn’t tell you specifically what those signs were. So I couldn’t tell her about rooting and crying and these kinds of things. So it was a bit embarrassing because I felt that I was dropping the nurse on the, the midwife on the ward in it, because it was making her look as if she’d failed in her job, whereas actually I’d declined that information from her. And there didn’t seem to be a box to tick to say, “I declined that.”

 

The woman who was conducting the audit also managed to make me feel quite stupid, as well, because I clearly came across as somebody who knew nothing about caring for a baby [laughs], whereas I felt quite confident that things would fall into place. She asked me about what the benefits of breastfeeding were, and I can remember all I could think of saying was that it was very portable [laughs], and that wherever you were you had an instant supply, which obviously isn’t the main reason that it’s so advocated by healthcare staff. I said, “Oh, I think it provides immunity against illness.” And she said, “Can you tell me which ones?” And I said, “Asthma” and I can’t remember what else I said now. And she just kept looking at me like there was more. And I just couldn’t get the more. And then after she’d finished, I said, “What was that last one, then?” And she said, “Eczema.” I said, “Oh, I got asthma. I mean, come on, I was nearly there” [laughs].

But she was, she had no humour about her at all and she just wanted to get her boxes ticked so she could go. And the whole experience was unpleasant. I was being interrogated. And I’d just had a baby, I’d had no sleep, I probably wouldn’t have known what my name was at that stage, never mind complicated answers to questions like that. So I felt that experience was quite negative. I felt she undermined my confidence. And I think looking back if I had been the ward midwife, I would have said to the audit woman, “Don’t go near her, don’t hassle her. She’s had no sleep. She just wants to go home. Let’s leave her be.” But, no, you know. So I was in this ridiculous situation of being grilled before I was allowed to go home. 

But at the time I just thought, “Oh, okay. A bit of research. It won’t take long. That’ll help” you know. But actually I think it was probably completely unhelpful, because it turned what had been a good, positive and useful bit of midwifery from the midwife from the ward, it made it look like she hadn’t done her job properly. So I was a little cross about that. But again there was no comeback, there was no way of really letting people know that. And at that point you just want to go home and get on with your life, really.

There’s way too many pointless audits going on. A lot of them are completely pointless, like I think that one was. I mean there are wider political issues to do with why that’s the case. A lot of people working in the NHS have managers who drive them to carry out an audit, doesn’t matter what it is, “Just do an audit.” And so an idea will come out of nowhere, “Oh, let’s audit this or that”, without people actually thinking what, how it can best be carried out, what the impact on their client group is going to be, and what they’re going to do with the results. And I think the ethical committee, part of their role should be, “What’s in it for the patients here?” Not, “Can we answer a question adequately and is it ethical?” It should be, “If the results show a positive result, what does that then mean?” That’s what they should be looking at. Where does it go from there? If there’s no money to take it any further, then what’s the point? It’s a waste of time. And I’m not sure that researchers are necessarily in a position to make those decisions. I think there needs to be a more overall global body looking at the research that goes on and piecing the pieces all together, so you don’t get this hotchpotch of stuff being done all over the place, that’s either replicating itself or going down a blind alley, really.