A new initiative to improve safety for women and babies during childbirth has inspired East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) to invest in a state-of-the-art simulator doll at the Lancashire Women and Newborn Centre.
The Lucina simulator, which arrived in East Lancashire in February, is a £59,000 investment by the ‘Better Training Better Births’ (@BTBBirths) project to train the Trust’s midwives, obstetricians and anaesthetists.
Angela O’Toole, Head of Midwifery at East Lancashire Hospitals, said: “East Lancashire Hospitals is pleased to be part of a national campaign to improve maternity safety in response to The National Maternity Review, ‘Better Births’.”
“Midwives and obstetricians want to improve working relationships between their professions and other groups such as neonatologists and anaesthetists. ‘Better Training Better Births’ will allow us to do that for the benefit of mothers and babies in East Lancashire.”
‘Better Training Better Births’ is a groundbreaking collaboration between East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, with Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
With funding provided by Health Education England, ‘Better Training Better Births’ aims to build collaboration across local NHS trusts and standardisation of training. Consultant obstetricians and anaesthetists together with midwives and maternity support workers from each of the three trusts will participate in the redesigned training.
While all three Trusts previously provided this training, there were differences. The new developed e-learning programme will be standardised across each site, ensuring evidence based practice across the region.
Catherine Nield, Better Training Better Births Project Lead, said: “It is wonderful that three neighbouring Trusts can come together to learn and train together. Not only is collaboration within maternity training extremely important, the multidisciplinary training that is also involved is invaluable.
“We can share and learn together and this is an important factor in collaboration, safety and care provision. The feedback from the first training days was fantastic and I cannot wait to see the benefits from this type of training.”