Publish date: 3 May 2022
To celebrate International day of the Midwife, public health midwife, Carla Anderson shares more about her role
Hi, my name is Carla and I’m a public health midwife which involves working to implement services to improve the health of families across Northumberland and North Tyneside. My role focuses on inequalities in health and how as a trust, we can ensure that everyone has access to the same services and has the opportunity and support to have a healthy pregnancy and give their baby the best start in life. Public health in maternity is expanding rapidly and ensuring that health inequalities are addressed in all new services is a challenging but vital part of my role.
I have worked in the NHS for 10 years as a nurse and midwife. I love meeting people from all different backgrounds and genuinely love helping people and advocating for those who need support. In my role I have the opportunity to work on lots of diverse and exciting projects including parent education, vaccinations, smoking cessation, healthy weight clinics and staff training. I love working with different teams throughout the trust as this is a great learning experience. There is never a quiet day and never a dull moment which is just how I like to work.
This week we are launching a new ‘best start in life’ advisor team who will provide support to families during pregnancy and postnatally. This is a really exciting opportunity for women to have additional support with issues that may be preventing them from having a healthy pregnancy. We have also recently started midwife led aquanatal classes as part of the Active Hospitals programme. Women have been requesting this for a while so it’s fantastic that we are now able to offer this because physical activity is really important for a healthy pregnancy. At the end of this month we will be re-launching midwife led ‘bumps and buggy walks’ in Alnwick and we’re looking to expand this into other areas. This is a great initiative to be involved in as it helps new parents to connect and keep active.
Over the past few months Covid vaccination in pregnancy has been a huge topic so we developed a midwife led vaccination service for pregnant people. This remains very busy and I am enjoying working with communities in different areas to provide evidence-based information about vaccination.
As part of my role I am part of the team who manage our maternity social media channels and seeing the feedback we receive from families through our Instagram and Facebook pages is easily one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Every week we receive dozens of compliments about the maternity team and families send photos and feedback about their care and birth experiences for us to share. It is a joy to read these comments and pass them on to staff – usually with tears in my eyes! I am so proud to work as part of the maternity team at Northumbria, from the senior managers to the clinical staff, I am always humbled by the dedication and hard work of everyone.
My vision for the future for is to see all services accessible for all families, no matter where they live, their circumstances or background. I am proud that we are making great strides towards this at Northumbria.