Blog: NMC and GMC work together to create resources to help tackle challenges in maternity care

Tracey MacCormack, Assistant Director for Midwifery at the NMC, and Cathy Finnegan, the GMC’s Head of Strategy and Planning in the Standards team, explain how this joint venture came together to support the professionals on our registers.

Everyone has the right to safe, effective and compassionate care. But we know that is not always the reality.

Recent and ongoing reports and investigations into maternity and neonatal services, such as those in East Kent and Nottingham, continue to highlight examples of poor multidisciplinary teamworking, poor communication and a lack of compassion – and make clear how care and safety can suffer as a result.

We know that the best care happens when multidisciplinary teams work together effectively – including doctors, midwives and nurses. So, we both felt that a joint GMC-NMC project to speak with one voice, showcase best practice and help to support high-quality and equitable care was both necessary and timely.

Putting the resources together

When we were developing our resources, a key part of our work was listening to clinicians, and to the organisations working in maternity, to really gather an understanding of the issues they face.

What did we hear?

Feedback from stakeholders centred on several issues:

• The challenges of multi-disciplinary working and team relationships, as well as feedback about handovers, and interactions between primary and secondary care.
• The importance of communication with those receiving care and their families, and exploration of the challenges faced by those for whom English isn’t their first language.
• Issues around escalation and candour, and the need to support staff so they’re aware of the routes to escalate.
• Inequalities in care and outcomes, and actions that healthcare professionals can take to tackle and address them.

We heard from medical and midwifery professional and representative bodies, systems regulators in the four countries of the UK, equalities organisations and programmes focused on improving the quality of perinatal care, including NHS England’s Perinatal Culture and Leadership Programme.

A GMC colleague shadowed a maternity ward for several days and the NMC midwifery team have continued to visit clinical settings across the UK speaking to staff, students and service users – all providing invaluable insight into the day-to-day work in these settings and an opportunity to understand what healthcare professionals need to provide good, safe care.

We knew it was vitally important to hear about the challenges faced by those who have direct experiences of the difficulties in maternity care, so we also worked with patient organisations and charities that support bereaved families, including the Sands and Tommy’s Joint Policy Unit.

By engaging with these stakeholders, we gained insights to help put together the most useful, well-informed resources we could, all the while acknowledging the pressure that staff face in these settings.

Two resources, launched in tandem

The GMC advice is available on the ethical hub pages of our website, split by the key themes highlighted in our engagement. On each tab we set out the areas of professional standards which are most relevant, and we signpost to guidance and resources from other organisations to create a more joined-up approach to tackling concerns within maternity care.

On the NMC website a series of case studies focus on the areas highlighted in our engagement and showcase good practice and lessons to learn. We highlight the experiences of midwives, doctors, a student, a neonatal nurse, women and families.

It’s important to note that these resources don’t create any new professional standards for our registrants and don’t replace formal guidance. They are designed to highlight the relevant professional standards and show how they can be applied in practice.

The value we hope these resources bring

We encourage the professionals on our respective registers to read and learn from the new resources – they can reflect on them, consider their own practice and use them to support their effective work with other professionals. 

It has been a very positive experience working together across our respective organisations and with the wide range of stakeholders who have given such insightful input. We hope that those working in maternity care find the resources useful.

Find out more at our webinar on 25 March

To find out more about multidisciplinary working and how the GMC and NMC worked together, we’re hosting a webinar at 15:00 on Wednesday 25 March - you can register here.

In this webinar we’ll explain more about how and why we worked together on these resources and we’ll hear perspectives about why good teamwork is so important in maternity services, from:

• Paris Pinnock-Cowell and May Stevens, whose work as Cultural Safety Midwives features in the NMC case studies;
• Dr Tony Kelly, the National Specialty Advisor for the Maternity and Neonatal Programme in NHS England, and
• Imelda Smyth, a service user representative of the NMC’s Maternity Strategic Advisory Group (MSAG).

You can view the GMC’s maternity care resource on the ethical hub and the NMC’s case study resource here.

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