Heartbeat: New consultant midwife appointed

February 20, 2019

Lydia Nestor, a long standing member of the maternity team has been named as our new consultant midwife.

Lydia trained as a nurse at Sandwell Hospital, where she worked for six months after qualifying, before realising that her heart was set on becoming a midwife.

18 months of training followed before she qualified as a midwife. Her first post was a rotational role at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton, before she returned to Sandwell Hospital (where our maternity services were based then) in 1986.

“I have been here ever since,” laughed Lydia when Heartbeat caught up with her to find out more about her new role.

“Throughout my time here I have had the opportunity to work within integrated teams, both in hospital and in the community and I was able to gain an appreciation for a woman’s care as part of their family unit and seeing the impact of care quality on the family for many years to come.”

Lydia was appointed as a midwifery manager in early 2000 and has been given various opportunities to learn and develop which she says have helped her on her journey to becoming our new Consultant Midwife.

“My experience in a number of leadership roles has been strengthened by the leadership programmes supported by the organisation’s learning and development department. This has really helped me to further my understanding of links between good leadership, team effectiveness and the delivery of high quality compassionate care.”

One of the main functions for the consultant midwife role is acting as an expert reference point for midwives and the multi-disciplinary teams, aiming to improve outcomes and patient experience. It requires keeping the woman as the focus of her care and to normalise their experience of maternity care wherever possible.

Lydia explained more: “For many women, maternity care and birth is a normal process, but due to our complex demographic area, this is not the case for all of our patients.

“Our service provides a range of specialist obstetric consultant clinics that care for women in pregnancy with conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, mental ill-health, and other medical conditions.”

Lydia runs a weekly psychological wellbeing clinic for ladies that require additional care, planning and those are experiencing anxiety due to a variety of sources.

“The women who attend the clinic are fearful of the maternity process and particularly of giving birth,” said Lydia.

“At their appointment I try and understand what has happened and we talk through the options for birth, including pain relief and place of birth.

“Some of the ladies feel better able to cope after one appointment, but others need more and some leave with an open appointment to return if they need to. I have also set up some telephone consultation clinics for women that I have already met, which will save their travel time or time out of work etc.

“I also see women postnatally, so we can debrief on their experience, which reduces the chance of them developing postnatal depression or trauma symptoms and helps to keeps them psychologically well as they move on with their family life. For some, this forms planning for their next birth.”

Aside from the clinics and work with individual patients, Lydia will play a vital role in shaping the future of maternity care across the region as we implement the recommendations from Better Births, the maternity five year forward view.

A key priority for this work is reorganising teams to provide improved continuity of carer. Another key priority is to set up a Maternity Voices partnership, a local group which will consist of women and their families, commissioners and providers working together to review and contribute to the development of local maternity care.

It is clear from talking to Lydia that she has a genuine passion and excitement for her new role. As an internal candidate for the role, Lydia was able to spend time shadowing Kathryn Gutteridge (our previous consultant midwife who retired last year) at a number of clinics to ensure continuity of this valuable service.

“Kathryn passed the baton on so to speak,” said Lydia.

“I am really looking forward to carrying on her work and to being able to make a different to patients and their families of Sandwell and West Birmingham.”