Delivery Unit Skills for Sensitive People
How do we offer amazing care, while holding together all our feelings about medicalisation, choice, and limitations on the service?
What are the practical things you need to be able to do on delivery unit, while still bringing your emotional intelligence?
Where do we even start with all this when even the name ‘Delivery Unit’ is problematic?
I’m Ellie Durant, I’m a midwife. You might know me from my books, or from a massive Facebook group called ‘The Secret Community for Midwives in the Making’.
I work with a paradox. I love intrapartum care and feels it’s part of my life’s work to be on delivery unit/labour ward. But I’m also a person with big questions around NHS care and I can be easily hurt by the intensity of the job.
This is a course that lets you stroll around my head and my thoughts on complex intrapartum care. It covers the basic skills needed to offer brilliant care on delivery unit, including written what I prioritise, and materials/details on the notes I hold while I’m on shift and how I access them easily.
In this course I am trying to unite the stuff we need to get done to offer safe and excellent care, along with the need to look after our own feelings and ‘midwife the midwife’.
Some of What We’ll Explore Together in This Course:
What to prioritise as a learner on delivery unit
What sensitive midwives do to make their practice so helpful to clients
The wider story of client/female autonomy which is always under the surface in DU care, how to hold duality in relationship to your commitment to your clients
The path to discovering your self-respect and grounded faith in your ability, even when you’ve been away from DU for a little while
The role of technology (good and bad)
Details of how I easily access reference material, including examples you can adapt, print and use yourself
The paradox of being an NHS midwife who truly cares; why going to work and making a difference every day comes from you engaging with unsolvable questions, so there is nothing wrong with you if you are constantly thinking about things from many different points of view!
Why we should never throw people away
I would imagine this course would be brilliant for anyone coming back to delivery unit, or students starting to work there. If you are already experienced, you may find the exploration of how we deal with the emotions that come with such care, to be helpful. But this is not a course that will teach you high dependency skills or anything of that nature.
As always, I’m trying to use communication as an art form here. I believe the easiest way to learn is to find a teacher who you have some affinity with. If you think you might be a little bit like me, this course will be perfect.