A Day In The Life Of A Programme Coordinator For Antenatal Screening Wales
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Antenatal poster v4
What does a typical day look like for a Programme Coordinator?
Antenatal Screening Wales (ASW) manages the antenatal screening programmes-early pregnancy dating scan, anomaly scan, HIV, syphilis, hepatitis B, blood group and antibodies, sickle call and thalassaemia, Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome screening. All pregnant women in Wales are offered these screening tests by their midwifery team within the health board. We are a small team of three Programme Coordinators, led by a great Head of Programme and supported by a fantastic admin team. Each day is different, some routine, but also some unplanned.-never boring!! It may be working on your own Programme, or answering queries for one of the other Programme Coordinators. A Programme Coordinator needs to have good knowledge across all Programmes to be able to support health board staff with any queries within all aspects of the Programmes-which is vast. Health professionals that we work alongside are student midwives, midwives, sonographers, obstetricians, neonatologists, virologists, biochemists, genetics, support organisations within Wales, and across the four nations. A fair amount of the daily routine is updating our literature to reflect best practice, producing and updating e learning packages for the Programmes, ensuring the Programmes are quality assured and generally ensuring that all our messages, within our literature is “consistent”- a word we all have grown to dislike. On a wider Public Health Wales perspective, I am a member of the Job Matching Panel, staff side, which gives me a wider perspective of the roles within the organisation.
What is your background and what got you interested in this area of work?
I started training as a registered nurse in 1984, qualifying in 1987. I worked on a medical ward that specialised in management of Diabetes-loving the health promotion aspect of the role, and then commenced midwifery training in 1988. I took 18 weeks out of the training, to put theory into practice, when I was pregnant and giving birth to my first daughter. Maternity leave at that time was 18 weeks!! So glad that that has changed over the years. I qualified as a midwife in 1990 and worked within the local health board for the next 24 years. Within that time, I worked with in all aspects of midwifery: antenatal care, post natal care, community care and labour and delivery. I became interested in antenatal screening when it was in its infancy back in 1999. My dissertation for the MSc in Reproductive Health at that time centred on ultrasound markers found on pregnancy scans. It is incredible that we are still talking about them 20 years later-although I’m glad to report, that the management of these findings has much improved thanks to Antenatal Screening Wales. I spent a couple of years at the health board managing the antenatal clinics, day assessment units as well as leading on the concerns for obstetrics, gynaecology and sexual health. My role was becoming too dilute and at this point (2014), I joined ASW, being able to refocus my time and experience into a role that I loved, that of antenatal screening. This time at a national level, rather than that of a local level.
What is the best bit about your job?
Being a midwife for the past 33 years, helping to empower women during an important time in their lives has been paramount for me. Knowing that working at a national level, I am contributing to ensuring that all pregnant women are accessing a high quality antenatal screening programme with an emphasis on personalised choices whether they decide to decline or accept screening. Some women in the past have described antenatal screening as “being on a hamster wheel, once on there, unable to get off”. Antenatal Screening Wales is a great place to work; we work alongside an always-evolving network of like-minded health professionals within the health boards and beyond.
What is the most challenging bit about your job?
Working within a managed clinical network has its challenges, as ASW establishes policies, standards and a performance management for antenatal screening, which is then delivered by the health boards. In addition, there are many discussions with health professionals on what sits outside of the screening programme, where the ASW pathway ends and clinical practice and diagnostic pathways start.
How do you switch off outside of work?
I recently retired and returned to work on a part time basis. I have never worked anything other than full time, so getting to grips with this change. I am catching up on travelling again with my husband and dog, having treated myself to a campervan; something restricted upon us over the past few years.