Speakers
Kate Brintworth
Kate Brintworth, RM, BSc (Hons) MSc is the Regional Chief Midwife for London and has worked strategically across many parts of the maternity system, including as Head of Maternity Transformation at the Royal College of Midwives, and Head of maternity commissioning for East London, leading the delivery of the STP maternity plan, East London ‘Better Birth’ pioneer programme and development of the Local Maternity System. Kate has also been part of regional maternity networks, national expert reference groups for commissioning, postnatal and continuity of care, and research steering groups for complex programmes of research. She has worked as a Local Supervising Authority Support Midwife, caseloading midwife, labour ward co-ordinator, risk manager, Matron and been involved in many investigations. Special interests are system working, reducing inequalities for both staff and service users, organisation of services to support midwives and service users, coproduction, tariff and women making complex care choices.
Miss Susie Crowe
Susie is a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and is the Regional Lead Obstetrician for London. She is passionate about supporting all women and birthing people to have safe, positive birth experiences. Her interests are in intrapartum care, personalisation, patient safety, education, and leadership. She was the programme lead on the RCOG / RCM programme Each Baby Counts Learn and Support and has contributed to a number of other recent national initiatives including iDecide, ABC, and Re:birth.
Susie is President-elect of the British Intrapartum Care Society and will be closing the conference.
Jennifer Izekor
Talk: Leading For Inclusion With Cultural Intelligence (CQ) – The Role of Leaders in Creating Inclusive Intrapartum Care Services
Jennifer Izekor is CEO & Founder of Above Difference
In her presentation Jennifer will explore the role that leaders play in creating inclusive maternity services for women and communities.
She will briefly explore the relationship between inclusive leadership and cultural intelligence and challenge leaders to consider how they are developing themselves and the people they lead to meet the challenge of leadership and culture identified in all the recent reports including Ockendon.
Finally, Jennifer will offer some reflections and tips for leaders to take away to help them progress on their inclusive leadership journey.
#LeadingDifferenceDifferently
#IntentionallyInclusiveLeaders
Dr Tony Kelly
I am the National Clinical Advisor for the Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme within NHS England and Improvement, whose aim is to improve the safety and outcomes of maternal and neonatal care by reducing unwarranted variation and provide a high-quality healthcare experience for all women, babies and families across maternity and neonatal care settings in England. I have been working at national level since 2016 and have gained experience working with a range of stakeholders across the whole of the maternity transformation programme.
Previously I was the Director of the Patient Safety Collaborative in the KSS Academic Health Science Network for two years. Prior to this I have worked in a regional capacity on quality improvement for a number of years. From 2010 to 2014 I was the Associate Medical Director for Quality and Innovation at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust. I have been working in the field of clinical effectiveness and quality improvement for over 20 years, and specifically within safety and quality for the last 15 years.
I am a clinician at heart and I have been a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at University Hospitals Sussex in Brighton since 2003. I provide specialist antenatal care focused on preterm labour and am one of several obstetricians providing high risk intrapartum care.
I am a passionate cook and enjoy entertaining and travelling. I take my frustrations out on both the golf course and my ageing knees when running.
Jo Mountfield
Vice President for Workforce and Professionalism, RCOG
Jo is a consultant obstetrician in Southampton also working in education. Her specialisms include supporting women negotiating substance misuse in pregnancy and she is also Director of Education and Workforce at her hospital. Her current work leading the workforce agenda at the college includes the introduction of initiatives such as the certificate of eligibility for locums in O&G and scoping the requirements for safe staffing within the specialty. She is also leading RCOG work to update the advanced training and subspecialty curricula.
Louise Page
Deputy clinical director – HSIB maternity investigation programme
Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – West Middlesex site
Outgoing President of BICS, Louise will be opening the conference.
Louise is the deputy clinical director for the maternity investigation programme at the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch and Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist at West Middlesex Hospital, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. She trained at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, London and specialised during her early postgraduate career in Obstetrics & Gynaecology. She undertook her speciality training in London and Sydney, Australia. She was appointed as a Consultant in 2010.
In her clinical practice she has developed a special interest in intrapartum care, perinatal mental health and maternal medicine. She has a MSc in Quality and Safety in Healthcare from Imperial College. She is the obstetric service lead at West Middlesex Hospital and one of the maternity quality and safety leads at Chelsea & Westminster.
She was the inaugural President of the British Intrapartum Care Society and is one of the co-organisers for the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists / British Maternal & Fetal Medicine Society Management of the Labour Ward course held annually at the RCOG.
Louise is part of the senior team at the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch undertaking a significant number of independent investigations focusing on maternity services and perinatal care, specifically all cases of maternal death related to pregnancy and other cases meeting the criteria of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists ‘Each Baby Counts’ programme – over 1200 investigations per year.
Hannah Rutter
Hannah Rutter has worked in the NHS for 25 years, first qualifying as a Registered Nurse and then a Registered Midwife. Hannah has a broad range of experience in different clinical settings, but her passion has always been safety in perinatal care.
Currently her role is Senior Improvement Manager within the Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme, and sees it as a privilege to be leading on the national Maternity Early Warning Score (MEWS) and Newborn Early Warning Trigger and Track (NEWTT2).
Her other interests are inequalities in healthcare provision and women and family involvement.
Hannah is currently studying an MSc in Patient Safety which has enabled her to expand her knowledge in a variety of areas and bring some of the insight to her work.
AJ Silver
Talk Title: LGBTQ+ Competency in Maternity and Perinatal Services
AJ Silver (They / Them) founded The Queer Birth Club out of necessity to fill the void of LGBT+ inclusion in the birth world.
AJ is a highly trained and experienced birth & postnatal Doula, a probationary breastfeeding counselor and a qualified babywearing consultant.
They bring together the stories and experiences of members of the LGBT+ community; Adding and amplifying the voices of the overlooked and often invisible minorities in the birthing world.
Professor Peter Von Dadelszden
Peter von Dadelszen is Professor of Global Women’s Health, King’s College London, Honorary Consultant Obstetrician at King’s Health Partners, and International Representative for the Americas, Australasia, and the Pacific Rim on the Council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologiists. A New Zealander (and now Canadian), Peter trained clinically and academically in New Zealand, UK, and Canada, and has practiced academic subspecialty maternal-fetal medicine in Canada and the UK. With his wife, Laura Magee, Peter was co-recipient of the 2014 International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy Chesley Award. Currently, his research focus is on pregnancy hypertension, fetal growth, and stillbirth, primarily through the PRE-EMPT, PRECISE, and PRECISE-DYAD initiatives funded by the Gates Foundation, UKRI, and Wellcome, respectively.
workshop facilitators
Dr Sarah Bates
Dr Sarah Bates is running a workshop alongside Dr Tracey Kay. She is a Consultant Paediatrician & Neonatologist at Great Western Hospitals and Neonatal Quality Lead at BAPM
Sarah Espenhahn
Sarah is the Maternity Service User Voice Lead for London, a role which supports Maternity Voices Partnerships as well as representing service users in various projects for the London Regional Team and Maternity Clinical Network, including the current round of Ockenden assurance visits. Sarah is also the mother of 3 children, and has been a member of Chelsea & Westminster Maternity Voices Partnership since 2009; she has recently stepped down as co-chair after 6 years. She is passionate about co-producing improvements with service users towards a system that sees women, birthing people and families, and all the staff that care for them, as individuals and meets their needs.
Dr Samantha Halliday
Associate Professor in biolaw at Durham Law School
Dr Tracey Kay
Tracey Kay is Obstetric Quality Lead at BAPM
Professor Sara Kenyon
Sara Kenyon is a Professor of Evidence Based Maternity Care at the University of Birmingham and has a background as a midwife. She is currently leading working on the maternity theme of the NIHR Applied Health Collaboration (ARC) in the West Midlands. She has co-developed the maternity triage system called BSOTS, which is increasingly being implemented in UK maternity units. She is Chief Investigator for the HTA funded High or Low Dose Syntocinon Trial (HOLDS) and iHOLDS trials. These are multicentre, pragmatic, randomised, double blind controlled trials which will recruit 3900 women from 30 Maternity units to evaluate the effect on caesarean section rate of high dose regimen versus standard dose regimen oxytocin for nulliparous women at term (37-42 weeks gestation) when it is used for delay and induction of labour.
She is a member of the 'MBRRACE-UK' collaboration appointed by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) to continue the national programme of work investigating maternal deaths, stillbirths and infant deaths, including the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths (CEMD). She co-chairs the perinatal confidential enquiries with Professor Draper (Leicester). She is also part of the collaboration developing and implementing the Perinatal Mortality Review Tool to standardise review of perinatal death. She is a Fellow of the Roya College of Midwives and a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and an NIHR Senior Investigator.
Julia Lidderdale
Julia is a mother of two boys and a consultant midwife in public health in South West London. After qualifying in 1988 as a nurse, she has worked internationally and in a diverse range of settings from project management, specialist midwife roles, bereavement care, perinatal mental health, labour ward co-ordinator, education, counselling and safeguarding supervision. After training as a psychotherapist she has worked in private practice and within the NHS. Julia gained a master's degree in psychotherapeutic approaches to mental health and trained to be an accredited Balint group leader. Julia has run regular Balint groups within her trust, and at conferences including groups for international delegates at Balint Society Weekends. She enjoys challenging treks and looking after dogs in her spare time.
Nichola Ling
Nichola graduated as a doctor in 2005 from University of Newcastle upon Tyne and proceeded to Specialty Training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the East Midlands Deanery. She was appointed as a Consultant Obstetrician at University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust in 2014, subsequently becoming Labour Ward lead and IT lead for the department. Having had a keen interest in all things digital since childhood - she built a computer in her bedroom as a student - it was a natural step to start working within the digital healthcare field and having been heavily involved in multiple digital projects at the Trust, Nichola joined NHS England in May 2022.
Nichola is passionate about using technology to deliver better care - be that by making processes more efficient, increasing access to information and support or by collating and using data to drive improvement. She has a particular interest in supporting women to make the choices that are right for them and is working on digital projects to improve the process of gaining and recording informed consent.
Sharon Moran
Sharon Morad is a Consultant Obstetrician with a special interest in maternal medicine and intrapartum care. She is the Clinical Lead for Delivery Suite at Birmingham Women’s Hospital. She has several years’ experience working in East Africa and is passionate about improving the quality of care for vulnerable women and minorities. She has published work on Dignity in Labour and the impact of 24/7 consultant presence on delivery suite. After she was sent reluctantly off on Wave 1 of the MatNeo QI training programme, she has become an enthusiastic convert to quality improvement work, having since implemented QI programmes that have successfully improved accuracy and efficiency in maternity triage, decreased surgical site infections, and reduced delays and morbidity during induction of labour.
Dawn Parris
Dawn is a research fellow working on the Rotate clinical trial.
Dr Sara Webb
I have been registered midwife for over 20 years, the past 15 years as a Clinical Academic Midwife specialising in Childbirth Related Perineal Trauma (CRPT) with a particular interest in OASI. Since 2020 I have been Head of Information and Research Services at the RCM. I hold a passion for midwifery led research to improve and evolve care and our profession. I want to support everyone in becoming involved in research and remembering it is a vital component of our role. I am also dedicated to getting our midwifery knowledge published and shared. Come and chat to me about how I and the RCM can help you with sharing your clinical, research or reflection experiences or help you navigate a midwifery research pathway.
Professor Andrew Weeks
Andrew Weeks is Professor of International Maternal Health Care at the University of Liverpool. He is also honorary consultant obstetrician at Liverpool Women’s Hospital where he runs Schwartz Rounds and is clinical lead for health and wellbeing. He’s on the RCOG Supporting our Doctors committee, and was obstetric lead on the INDIGO study of obstetricians’ mental health.
Andrew Weeks’ primary research interest is in intrapartum care and global health. He has a particular interest in misoprostol, medical devices and postpartum haemorrhage. He runs intrapartum clinical trials in the UK, Uganda and India, funded by the EU, MRC, Wellcome Trust, DFID and NIHR.
Oral Abstract Presentations
Is it feasible to test OptiBreech Care in a clinical trial? Results of the OptiBreech 1 study
Shawn Walker
Detection of anal sphincter injury using a sensorised surgical glove
Shireen Jaufuraully
The experience of independent maternity safety investigations
Sonia Barnfield
Severe infant brain injury associated with impacted fetal head at caesarean section: a cross-cohort
Katie Cornthwaite
The Carboprost or Oxytocin Postpartum Haemorrhage Effectiveness Study: Can we COPE?
Elizabeth Deja
Open disclosure of avoidable stillbirth with families in National Health Service (NHS) maternity car
Mary Adams
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