Hello my name is Kath Evans; I work at NHS England and lead on improving experiences of maternity care with women, families and practitioners.
Having stood in a churchyard with friends and watched 39 balloons drift into the sky recognising 39 weeks of pregnancy prior to a beautiful sleeping baby boy entering the world, sat with a friend hearing how he valued the time he held his niece who had been also been born sleeping and heard the frustration of a mother who was excluded from general maternity survey processes when her son had died following birth, it very clear all of these families and so many others have rich insights on their care experience that are never heard by professionals because consistent processes haven’t existed to seek them out. We have an opportunity to change this.
I believe we have two jobs in health care, the job of delivery of care and also the job of improvement. Health care professionals strive to offer optimum care to women receiving maternity. Yet as receivers of care, women and their families know what really matters to them and how we can best meet their needs. How women and their families see and experience care is different to how we as professionals perceive care to be. It’s only by professionals asking, ‘how was for you?’ that we can glimpse the reality of these lived experiences and what it feels like to use services, these insights can and should, truly inform the focus for our improvement work.
There are some areas however where seeking out experiences are perceived to be very difficult or challenging due to sensitivities. When the death of a baby or babies occurs during a pregnancy we know that the care women and families receive stays with them for a lifetime. It’s the ‘little things’ that have a huge impact and Sands (the Stillbirth and neonatal death charity) from their work with families encourage us to do better in this area of care delivery. As professionals the very last thing we want to do is cause further distress to a family when they have already gone through so much by asking about these experiences, yet families have told us they want to be asked sensitively about what made a difference and they also want to share ideas for improvement where they may be needed too.
Until now a tool to seek out these experiences had not been developed. The 2014 National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU), ‘Listening to Parents after Stillbirth or the Death of their Baby’ study highlighted that we need to listen to this group of parents and to monitor their needs and experiences of care and to act upon that feedback. The Maternity Bereavement Experience Measure (MBEM) questionnaire will be launched later this week and to address this gap.
The Maternity Bereavement Experience Measure (MBEM) questionnaire has been informed and developed with bereaved families; it’s been tested nationally and will be available for local use. It provides a more standardised approach to seeking out experiences of pregnancy loss and addresses themes identified by families that really matter to them in a sensitive manner. The questionnaire can be used face to face, on paper, online, in whatever way suits the family best. Trusts will be able to add their logo and personalise the supporting letter included in the resource. The resource also provides information to health care professionals, providers and commissioners on how to gather feedback when bereavement has occurred during or shortly after pregnancy and importantly suggests how the feedback gathered can be used to drive improvement.
We hope that maternity teams, Maternity Voices Partnerships, patient experience teams, Patient Advice and Liaison Services (PALS), organisations such as Healthwatch; along with Local Maternity Systems, Maternity Voices Partnerships and local charities will also find the resource and questionnaire useful.
I believe that parents and families have the right to be heard in a compassionate and sensitive manner and then have the right to see the changes in services they have told us are needed when this is required.
Please do follow #LossExp #MatExp #BetterBirths to tweet into the event on 22/6/17.
The link to the "Gathering feedback from families following the death of their baby" is HERE
You can also join us for a multidisciplinary twitter chat led by @wemidwives on the 29/6/17 where together how we can explore using this questionnaire and resource to keep improving the quality of care in maternity.
I’m working to improve Experiences of Care, will you join me?
Kath Evans @kathevans2
Experience of Care Lead, Maternity, Infants, Children & Young People,
NHS England
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