The Northern Maternity and Midwifery Trailblazer Awards celebrated winners and commendees on the 4th July. The Awards recognised outstanding achievement and commitment to maternity and midwifery services over the past year across the North.
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Narrowcast Media Group produced, filmed and live streamed the Awards Ceremony on the day. You can watch back the ceremony on-demand today and catch up on all of the action from the day that you may have missed.
Watch the ceremony (below) and take a look back at some of the best photos from the day in this article.
Northern Trailblazer Awards 2023 from Narrowcast Media Group on Vimeo.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Midwifery Education Trailblazer
Dr Giliane McKelvin
Programme Lead for Midwifery
University of Bolton
Giliane is celebrated by her students for her leadership of the programme and her support andakes for being approachable. She takes feedback on board and shows she genuinely cares, supports us academically on placement, and encourages us to look after our mental health and well-being.
Giliane is a highly respected member of the Midwifery faculty and the University of Bolton. She is a well-published researcher; her passion for her students, midwifery, and the women we care for pours out of her in every conversation. She is inspirational and dedicated beyond any I have ever seen and truly listens to what we think and makes changes immediately. With her, we know we are heard.
WINNER
Midwifery Education Trailblazer Award
Caroline Myerscough
Senior Lecturer in Midwifery
Edge Hill University
During the height of the pandemic our programme lead Caroline, endured potentially the most horrifying experience of being separated from a loved one who was in a critical condition. Despite this and the horrors of an emerging pandemic, she firmly led the ship as we battled through a
change in standards and validation of an entirely new curriculum for our two programmes despite numerous challenges. Caroline has brought us through that time, despite her own ongoing challenges and forever puts others first. After another challenging year, she has remained a strong role model for us all.
Caroline emanates compassion and reassurance; she is so fondly regarded by past and present students and colleagues that she is someone who you are proud to say you know. Caroline deserves to be recognised as someone who is an instinctive and compassionate leader as I am not sure she quite understands just how special she is.
Midwifery is so lucky to have an advocate like her, she lights up the room with her laughter and is hard to forget.
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HIGHLY COMMENDED
Midwifery Practice Trailblazer Award
Team – Liverpool Women’s Hospital Delivery Suite
Exceptional support, welcome and kindness from every team member.
Recognises the whole team the domestics, ward clerks, HCAs, midwives, doctors, theatre team and even the incredible neonatal team, all treated as equal and will share our breaks together,
An amazing preceptorship team that is dedicated to providing support to NQMs. They come onto the delivery suite to support with cannulation, suturing and caring for complex patients among everything else.
DS never seems to get the recognition it deserves, and every one of the team is outstanding in the care they provide to patients, partners and staff. I’m honoured to be part of this team.
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WINNER
Midwifery Practice Leader Trailblazer Award
Emma McNeill
Practice Placement
Facilitator Gateshead NHS
Emma took on the role of PPF this year and already she has made a difference to the student experience. She has been working tirelessly to identify and develop learning opportunities for the students. However, her biggest achievement is creating support networks for students who have had time off the programme for health reasons. She has been working to ensure students feel welcomed back to the clinical area and given time to readjust into practice. Students state “she cares about us”, she is clearly focussed on not only student achievement but their wellbeing too.
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WINNER
Student Midwife Trailblazer Award
Lisa-Jayne Joyce
Third-year midwifery student
University of Suffolk
Lisa-Jayne has gone above and beyond to improve the birthing experiences in her local trust. Lisa has recently found her confidence in being able to provide women centred holistic care that enhances physiological processes with a medical model of care. Lisa, like others, was becoming more and more frustrated with the medical birth environment and the impact this is having on the women’s experience and birthing outcomes. She decided to be bold and brave and start bringing in items into the birth space that helped women feel safe, private, and calm including LED candles, fairy lights, projectors and combs. Lisa is also re-humanising maternity services, by helping women and birthing people to realise that they have choices in their birthing experience and is starting to call upon her peers when hearing the words ‘they are not allowed’. Since implementing these changes, she has received some amazing feedback from the women and is making other staff question their own practice and now staff are being acknowledge the physiological importance of creating a calm birthing environment. Lisa then has been able to share this with her cohort and has inspired other student midwives to feel brave enough to make small changed in their practice. Lisa is sending ripples of change.
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WINNER (2 nominations)
Special award: Service user/Advocate
Jo Dagustun
Maternity services improvement campaigner and AIMS volunteer
North West of England
Mum of four, Jo Dagustun is a maternity services improvement campaigner in the North West of England who engages primarily via her volunteer work with AIMS. Jo represents AIMS on the NHS England Maternity Transformation Project’s Stakeholder Council where she regularly raises issues of concern to service users and asks challenging questions to move the debate forward. She has also played a leading role in the development of the Charities’ and Service Users Maternity Continuity of Carer Network, campaigning for the implementation of Continuity of Carer, and was a lay representative on the RCM’s Re:Birth project. As one of our most active Campaigns volunteers she is an inspiration to the rest of the Campaigns team, freely sharing her knowledge and experience to help us progress our campaigning work, and mentoring less experienced colleagues. As well as her work campaigning for Continuity of Carer (see AIMS Campaigns Update, December 2022: Continuity of Carer – challenging times, but we’re still moving forward) and full implementation of the Better Births recommendations. She also took the lead in establishing our campaign for Physiology Informed Maternity Services (see AIMS Position Paper – Physiology-Informed Maternity Services).
In line with the AIMS USP, Jo works always from a systems perspective, integrating knowledge to ask questions that seek to drive effective maternity service reform.
An ex-civil servant, Jo’s interest in improving the maternity services began in 1988, during her first pregnancy. She has been active in the field since 2008, when she went back to university to learn more. Jo wrote a Masters dissertation on home as a place of birth, and then a PhD: “Learning to birth, mastering the social practice of birth: conceptualising birthing women as skilful and knowledgeable agents”. This was driven by a firm belief that effective maternity services demand ongoing action from three sources: policy makers, healthcare practitioners AND the public.
For her next challenge, Jo is taking over the chair of the Charities and Service Users Maternity Continuity Network, still as an AIMS volunteer, and this is probably about as crucial as it gets when talking maternity service reform in the UK.
I’d really like to see a regional MMF award go to Jo, not least as a reminder that much maternity service improvement work gets done outside of our paid job descriptions. Whilst AIMS isn’t in the position to offer Jo a salary in line with her contribution, I hope she knows how much we recognise her efforts and collaboration, to improve maternity services for all. Jo is always generous with her time. If you don’t know Jo already, please go and look her up on Twitter, at @GibbleJo.