Louise

Age at interview: 49

Brief Outline:

Louise has been a research midwife at a district general hospital for five years. During this time, she has worked on a number of studies and played a key role in promoting awareness of health research amongst patients, public and clinical colleagues.

Background:

Louise is a research midwife. She is married and has children. Her ethnic background is White British.

More about me...

Louise has been a research midwife for five years. She saw the post advertised and had mixed feelings initially: she wanted to “branch off and do something different” and move away from shifts, but was put off by the role sounding very academic. She informally visited a hospital research team and spoke to staff, which gave her more insight into the role. When Louise began the job, she had some negative responses from other midwives – perhaps because they had expected her to move into a nurse coordination role or lacked understanding about what the new job involved. Louise attended some training courses in the first few weeks of the post. The new role required some adjustment and was “a really massive learning curve”. There was some pressure from the study sponsors around recruitment at the start, but the processes became familiar with time.

For the first six months, Louise worked two days a week in her research role and two days a week in a clinical role. It was difficult to focus on two jobs and she still had night shifts, so Louise stopped her clinical role and worked solely as a research midwife for two years. In the last 18 months, she has worked in her research role for three days and clinical role one day a week – a balance which she likes. There are several reasons why Louise has combined research and clinical posts; for example, she missed aspects of the clinical role (particularly the relationships developed with patients) and wanted to maintain her clinical skills. Louise finds there is no scope to develop the same close connections with patients in research but that there is still contact. One study involves seeing participants once a year across a five year period and she finds people often remember her from the previous visit. Louise finds that clinical practices and skills are a rapidly changing field and that, even working clinically one day a week, it can be challenging to keep up. She finds it helpful that her clinical manager sends weekly emails detailing relevant information, and she attends meetings in the maternity unit as well as all the mandatory training.

Louise has worked on various studies about reproduction and childbirth as well as other health topics. Her current study consists of follow-ups with young children, and this means arranging visits with parents so a questionnaire can be completed and data collected (e.g. a saliva sample and skin prick test) which she then puts into a data management system. Louise was involved in reading and commenting on the write-up of the first study she worked on, and the findings are due to be published soon. In another study, Louise had an honorary contract at another hospital for one day a week – the hospital was larger and had more research activity, which gave her an insight into conducting research at different NHS settings. For example, at the other hospital, there were many research midwives whereas Louise is the only one at her hospital. Louise’s own hospital has become more research-aware over time, and she has been involved in raising the profile of research activity and roles (including through managing a Facebook account and having a stall at a big regional event to engage with the wider public).

Having dual jobs (research and clinical midwifery) is important to Louise, and she feels strongly that they can complement one another. She uses her midwifery knowledge and skills when relating to women in the studies and hopes the findings will benefit future patients. Working clinically allows her to maintain her clinical skills and understanding of the environment, and sometimes she notices topics relevant for research and improvement. The dual roles mean that her clinical colleagues see her “on the shop floor” in addition to her research capacity, and she has worked hard to maintain ties in the maternity unit. Sometimes Louise sees patients in her research that she has cared for in a clinical capacity, and introduces herself by explaining that she has two jobs. She wears a uniform when working clinically but not in research, which is another aspect distinguishing her different roles for other people.

Louise is due to start working on two new research studies in the next few weeks. She is also going to start working some clinical shifts in the Early Pregnancy Unit at her hospital. She hopes to complete a leadership course later this year and take on this role, which would draw on her experiences and networking skills. Her advice to other research midwives is to have a good understanding of the wider context (e.g. the hospital department, guidelines, practices) so that they can appreciate how studies will work within this setting and impact upon it.

Louise recalled that starting as a research midwife was “a really massive learning curve”.

First few months actually was quite a challenge, cos there was really big study that was waiting for the role to start. And it was completely different role and I found it quite a challenge at first. And there was another midwife that was employed with me at the same time, there was two of us to work on this study. Her, her hours were less but actually once I got into it, it was fine. It was just a really massive learning curve, and I think back now, if I had to do it now I’d be absolutely fine, I really would, but, but then it was quite hard. But I got there. The university that was running the study was like, you know, “Why aren’t your numbers this?” And, you know, could do better sort of thing. But in the end they were quite happy with our recruitment, and actually there was a sub-study and we recruited one of, one of the best hospitals to that sub-study with a really good retention, so in the end it was fine. But at first it was quite a big learning curve, but it was fine.

Louise gave an overview of the data collection activities involved in one study.

The main part of the study that I’m working on at the moment is a follow-up visit. So that takes quite a lot of sort of organising, contacting the patient, arranging the visit, you know, to see a two-year old, a lot of parents work now, so it’s organising all that, a bit of admin involved. And then the visit itself takes around an hour, there’s a large questionnaire, we collect a saliva sample from the child, and we do a skin prick test. And, and then there’s a lot of, quite a lot of data to collect then that’s all to input onto a computer system. So that’s one study.

Louise described a variety of ways she had helped raise awareness about health research to staff, patients and the public.

And I think, yeah just really spreading the word and working regionally, and being, being seen to do different things. We’ve done some charity work and we’ve raised some money for different charities and that particularly try to be involved with research, brain tumour research. We’ve had a bit of a high profile raising money for them. I think just the general social media thing has, you know, really gone out there. The staff bulletins, you know if we’ve got a study that a lot of staff can take part, it goes on the staff bulletin that everybody gets. We’ve had cake stalls in the reception that, you know, we have International Clinical Trials Day once a year that, you know, we try and put ourselves out there. [Regional event] that was a massive big publicity for us, which was great, you know, we had some banners and we had our own stand and it was we recruited really well to [regional health study] as well as screening for diabetes-, type II diabetes. So yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s really evolved over the last few years.