Always looking to improve...

Hello, i hope all is well.

I thought I would update you on some recent changes at Ipswich hospital maternity services. We knew that some of you found it difficult to contact your community midwives, this was due to various reasons including midwives working in areas with poor phone signal and also the majority of community midwives time is spent either in clinics, visiting women and driving from one place to another during their working day making it difficult to answer the phone at times. Whilst midwives diverted their phones to colleagues when on leave or days off texts did not get diverted, leaving texts unanswered and this caused concern and frustration for some of you. We realise how important it is for you to be able to speak to a midwife when you have queries regarding your pregnancies, therefore we have changed how we use the non-urgent phone line. This phone line is now manned each day by one of the community midwives between 09.00 and 17.00hrs the number is 01473 702666 this is for non urgent messages if you have questions that are because you believe you are in labour or of a more urgent matter still call the numbers on the front of your hand held notes. So far this line has been very busy with calls and we hope that this will improve the efficiency of the care we give to you.

Recently there have been also been some changes to the community midwives teams, these are also part of changes to improve the care we provide to pregnant women and will enable us to have a small team of midwives dedicated to caring for the more vulnerable pregnant women in our area. This has led to some of you having a change of midwife during your pregnancy we do understand how difficult this can be for you as you develop a special relationship with your midwife and we only do this when absolutely necessary and hope it doesn't disrupt you all too much We would also like to offer a warm welcome to Dr Alleemudder who has recently joined the the team as a consultant, Dr Aleemudder will work in both Obstetrics and Gynaecology and has an interest in infertility.

Until next time best wishes to you all

Tania Browes, Lead Community Midwife.