#IDM2018 at #UWShealth

What a day! 

A long drive to up to Scotland last night, and a 0600 start for our IDM celebration in Paisley, then a longer drive back to Newcastle💤

I first registered and set up my stall (yes, my stall!) that one of the lecturers asked me to do, doing tinsel hair and french/dutch plaits for donations to the UWS scholarship. It was slow at first but it didn't have pick up!

The morning was compromised of speakers, mostly centred around the best start 5 year plan, beginning with Dorothy Finlay the lead midwife from GG&C about being an early adopter. Dorothy had a lot to say and seemed really invested in making case loading a working model and the pilot teams have already been discussed. She talked about how this will affect women from NHS Highlands as they frequently come to GG&C for consultant care and elective caesarians. In a really forward thinking move, the adjustment to case loading will be phased in firstly through the women opting for an elective caesarian so we'll see how that goes!

After this was Maureen McSherry consultant midwife at NHS Lanarkshire who talked about how far NHSL is into implementation as an early adopter. The most exciting part was the AMU is all up and running! This is especially important as Maureen shared figures showing 35% of women in NHSL are induced, and more women who are induced have a vaginal birth than spontaneous labourers 😳, so this is definitely a much needed move. She finished on a high by discussing that over 80% of women achieve antenatal and postnatal continuity of carer, in practical terms this means they see less than 3 midwives and their named midwife for >50% of appointments, a real achievement already. 

After this was Lia Brigande a midwife from London who already caseloads. She had nothing but positive things to say and the seemed to genuinely glow when discussing her role and lifestyle. Particularly she spoke about the on call, which didn't seem so scary? It was an absolute pleasure to see her so passionate and positive about this, and its not just a 'low risk' caseload either! Lea also did a quick refresher on the evidence for continuity of carer, not just for the women but the midwives too!

Lunch, not that I had any, consisted of doing more peoples hair 😂

My first afternoon session involved a reiki session, which I naively thought would be a speaking session about reiki, which I'd also got confused and thought it was reflexology, ended up being a reiki session for me. It was only 15 minutes, but I walked out feeling super calm and needing a nap...