Hi Coralie, hope you're well. Can you paint us a portrait of yourself and your role?

There are two main aspects to my role.

• As lead midwife, I support the various NHS trusts with collaborative projects to standardise guidelines and processes to reduce variation and improve care across maternity services. Part of this means supporting the trusts to achieve compliance with national programmes and demonstrate how well they are implementing national safety recommendations.
• As Clinical lead for Digital Maternity, I also focus on our maternity electronic health record. This includes working with each of the teams to make sure the system is always as up-to-date as possible. I am currently working on projects to improve the access women have to their digital handheld records, enabling access to notes, information leaflets and baby scan photos via mobile phones or tablets.

What does a typical working day look like for you?

No two days are identical. Most days I work in C31 at the Health Innovation Campus (please call in and say hello if you're passing). On these days, I usually touch base with the digital midwives at each of the trusts each morning, just as a way of keeping on top of any issues which might have occurred. At 10am, I meet with the maternity teams to get an update on how busy each of the units are.

Then I might meet with one of many specialist teams as we work on updating guidelines, or with our data analysts who create safety and quality dashboards so the ICB and Trusts can maintain an overview of outcomes and support targeting services most effectively.

Or, doing my favourite thing which is going out on site visits.

What motivates you to do what you do?

I have been a midwife for many years now and have seen maternity care change over the years. Services are safer today than they have ever been, but we need to keep improving. I know the work I do contributes to this and that is what motivates me - as well as my regular trips to services and occasional clinical shifts.

What is/has been your favourite aspect of being part of the collaborative community through the Health Innovation Campus?

Working at the HIC had has been brilliant. I really like hearing about the many different projects at the Collaboration Cafe every week, I've met so many interesting people during the ‘chat’ afterwards and get involved in networks I wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t been part of this great community.