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We continue in our desire to support women, and their families, who have had a stillbirth and take measures to reduce stillbirths. An important aspect in this dissemination of good practice.
The Maternity Network held its 7th Annual Stillbirth Study Day earlier this month, attended online by more than 80 professionals, including consultants, trainees, midwives and neonatologists.
Dr Elaine Church, Chair of the Stillbirth group, chaired the event, which included the launch of the latest version of the North West Management of Stillbirth Guideline and Integrated Care Pathway version 4.
These documents will ensure the best service for families who experience stillbirth, standardise and rationalise care across the region and promote bereavement care of the highest standard.
Speakers at the Teams event covered topics including the RCOG Each Baby Counts quality improvement programme to reduce the number of babies who die or are left severely disabled as a result of incidents occurring during term labour and an overview of the recently launched BAPM guidance for managing extreme preterm birth (before 27 weeks of gestation).
The most poignant part of the session were the videos shared by the bereavement midwives, each sharing emotive and expressive snapshots of how challenging delivering bereavement care has been during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The interactive word cloud above describes the thoughts of the attendees, which we gathered following the videos.
Below you can read a poem by midwife Helen Marshall.
International Women’s Day
The GMEC Local Maternity System (LMS) marked International Women’s Day with a series of posts on social media.
The posts featured photos of people from the team involved with the LMS (see left, with Jo Langton, and Chantal Knight below) highlighting strong women and this year’s theme, which was #ChoosetoChallenge.
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Zoe Neilson, a project officer for the Maternity Network, said: “The Local Maternity System supported International Women’s Day on 8th March to highlight that they are challenging inequalities, working hard to address them and provide best standards of care for all women during their maternity journey.”
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The Cardiovascular Network is helping to unite clinicians across Greater Manchester to reduce the backlog of echocardiograms caused by Covid-19.
With some patients waiting more than 150 days for appointments, services from across the region have agreed to work together and pool their resources.
The GMEC Cardiac SCN Improvement programme will provide a standardised service in the region, with staff working across provider sites to support the catch-up of suspended activity due to the pandemic.
Keith Pearce, consultant cardiac scientist at Wythenshawe Hospital, who has helped establish the programme, said: “The echocardiography workforce across GM hospitals have recognised the importance of pulling together for the benefit of patients.
“The new programme will develop a pan-Manchester workforce, which will hopefully help in breaking down some of the traditional boundaries which previously prevented such an approach.”
The proposed model will greatly improve patient care across the region, facilitating;
- Timely patient access to cardiac imaging
- Timely patient reassurance
- Timely medical therapy and/or further cardiac investigation
- Standardisation of service delivery, ensuring high standard of imaging in line with the British Society of Echocardiography and smooth transition of care across the regions
- Patients not needing to travel to other hospitals outside of their locality
- Patient diagnostics staying within their CCG - remaining aligned with the locality’s post-Covid-19 recovery expenditure
- Great support for trusts with no alternative means to increase capacity (based on a minimum of 100 echoes per week, the time taken for recovery would be 39 weeks)
- The potential to support future echo services within community diagnostic hubs.
The new programme is needed despite GM Trusts increasing their capacity by utilising echo physiologists from a range of sources, including agency staff and NHS Professionals.
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The SCNs are working with Greater Manchester clinicians to support children and young people with longer term symptoms and complications of Covid-19.
The Children and Young People Network, its unscheduled clinical lead Julie Flaherty, and the Respiratory Network, are developing a long Covid pathway and service to support youngsters.
Recent data shows that from March 2020 and February 2021, 36,997 children and young people in Greater Manchester, from 0-19 years of age, tested positive for Covid-19.
Some of these children will have symptoms that last for more than 120 days and, for some, daily activities will be impaired by these symptoms.
Children and young people are less likely to be symptomatic when they have Covid-19 and may well not have felt ill at the time they had it. Using research from other countries, as well as our own data, has helped us to plan the types of services that our children and young people may need if they have long Covid.
Symptoms may include tiredness, fatigue, headache, abdominal pain, muscle and joint pain, post-exertional pain and rash. The Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital is providing specialist care for those children who need it, and additional support for the district general hospitals to ensure that all of our children receive the right care at the right time in the right place.
There are self-help materials for children who are well enough to be cared for in their home, including this document from the RCPCH.
Julie Flaherty said: “The development of long Covid clinics for children has been a truly excellent example of how our health care system works together to provide the best outcomes for children and young people in Greater Manchester.”
Our Respiratory Network is currently working with the English National Opera (ENO) to offer a six-week breathing and vocal exercise programme to support people who are living with the long-term effects of Covid-19.
The nationally-recognised programme, known as the ENO Breathe programme, teaches a range of techniques to people struggling with breathlessness and has been shown to improve outcomes.
Originally piloted in Oldham and North Manchester, the programme is now to be expanded across Greater Manchester to support treatment of long Covid-19. To begin with, this will be offered to patients being referred to local long Covid clinics for over 12 weeks as a potential treatment option.
The Network is also supporting all 13 GM Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) services to become accredited through the Royal College of Physicians Service Accreditation Scheme.
The accreditation is a nationally-recognised scheme that supports PR services to measure and improve the quality, and outcomes, of the care they provide to patients.
It also works to reduce unwarranted variation in local access and treatment. The Network will be funding the first three years of accreditation and forming a GM collaborative to enable our local services to support each other.
Our Respiratory Programme Lead, Gareth Lord said: “We are very excited to be embarking on this journey to support and enhance our local education and exercise programmes.
“This collaboration will not only refine local services, but put them in a better position to expand so we can improve the lives of more people living with chronic respiratory conditions.”
We have two new starters this month.
Naomi Kelly (pictured right) has joined the Cardiovascular Network as a project officer.
She said: “I’m 23 years old and I live in Sale with my partner and my puppy, Eric (pictured below left). In my spare time I enjoy going on hikes, visiting family, spending time with my friends (when we could!) and playing console games/board games.
“My previous role was within the Public Health Commissioning Team at the GMHSC Partnership, working on the screening and immunisation programmes in Greater Manchester. Prior to this, I worked at the Christie Hospital on the GatewayC programme and in the Education Events team.
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"I’m highly interested in equality and diversity within the NHS and will carry this through all my roles; I am currently part of the Women’s Network, the LGBTQ+ Network and the BME Network.
“I am excited to get stuck into work at the SCNs and to support the improvement of care in GM. The opportunity to be part of a network that supports better outcomes for patients is what really drew me to this role, and I love that I get to work in a team with the same passion. My career goal is also to be managing projects/programmes and so this worked perfectly for me to learn from my colleagues.”
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Gillian Bailey (pictured right) has joined the Palliative and End of Life Care Network.
She was previously with the Person and Community Centred Approaches team at Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership in 2018, having spent over 30 years within the health and social care sector. Gill is passionate about developing person-centred practices as catalysts for change and to support delivery of personalised care and support.
She has enjoyed working in various countries around the world and was a founder member of the Institute of Person-Centred Practices in India, and has co-authored several books on personalisation. Football is the love of her life and Man City are her team.
Elaine Parkin, quality improvement programme manager for the Palliative and End of Care Network, said: “We are very excited to welcome Gillian Bailey into the palliative and end of life care team.
“Gill brings a wealth of expertise in project management and person and community centred practice and will be a great asset to the palliative and end of life care programme of work.”
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