Respectful Relationships in the Maternity Service

This book inspires and acts as a resource for midwives, leaders, managers and students within maternity services who strongly desire to create positive cultures, whilst providing advice to individual professionals about available support. Research, reports, and investigations over many years into maternity services have proven that midwifery culture is sometimes lacking. This results in women, midwives, and student midwives being subjected to disrespectful behaviour including, in some instances, bullying. The consequences of this are that some maternity unit staff are unable to speak up, causing these maternity units to become increasingly unsafe, with high sickness and turnover rates amongst midwives and a high dropout rate among student midwives. These facts are widely documented and recommendations have been made about improving the culture of these units. The book summarises the evidence that a lack of respectful professional behaviour exists and identifies what constitutes bullying both in terms of the researched definition and behaviour. It goes on to explore resolution looking at the importance of safe staffing levels, psychological safety, models of midwifery care, coaching, Schwartz rounds, value-based education and leadership. This book also focuses on compassionate leadership, using case studies of where culture change has been achieved. This book is unique in addressing the gap in the literature on how to improve the midwifery culture and achieve respectful relationships in maternity services. The authors explore realistic ways, explain the reasons why some maternity units have a positive culture, and identify good practices that currently exist. It is a must-have for midwives, student midwives, educators, maternity health care assistants, nurses and student nurses as well as for all other health professionals and students in leadership and management masters’ programmes.

Maggie O’Brien has held senior midwifery leadership positions both in the UK and New Zealand, including the Director of Midwifery for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and for Auckland District Health Board. She has had experience of culture change in both countries and believes strongly in the importance of developing compassionate cultures for women and midwives, and in providing supportive environments for student midwives, enabling them to reach their full potential.Maggie was elected President of the Royal College of Midwives from 2004 until 2008 and received an Honorary Fellowship from the RCM in 2009. Maggie’s most recent role was Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Southampton. Dr. Ellen Kitson-Reynolds is Deputy Head of School for Education, Principal Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow - HEA, at the University of Southampton. Her interests link to transition from student to qualified practitioner, clinical decision making and autonomous practice, continuity of carer, Interprofessional education and bladder management.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- chapter 2. Where Are We Now?.- Chapter 3. The Impact of Staffing Levels, Psychological Safety and Maternity Cultures on .- Chapter 4. The Future of Midwifery Rests With our Students: Can you Meet the Challenge?.- Chapter 5. Coaching – A ‘Golden Thread of Change’.- Chapter 6. The Value of Schwartz Rounds in Changing Culture.- Chapter 7. Compassionate Leadership in Maternity and Neonatal Services.- Chapter 8. Finding Resolution.