Reassuring patients, taking obs, equipment checks, cleaning – and admission paperwork are big parts of the working day for Maternity Care Assistant Mel Buck.
Mel is based in Cley Obstetrics at the NNUH where many patients are waiting to be induced or needing extra care during their pregnancies.
Mel has been at the NNUH for 19 years and says the day starts with a handover from night staff to learn which patients need their obs doing immediately and which beds need to be cleaned and made up.
Obs include blood pressure, temperature, respirations and pulse and these are recorded on paper Meows charts, twice a day for some patients, four times a day for others. Each patient has their own folder of paperwork which are kept in the notes trollies. Sometimes this means Mel must wait for another clinician to finish with the folder.
She has a paper checklist of tasks which includes bedside O2, birthing balls and extensive daily damp dusting for all moveable equipment.
One of the main questions from her patients is ‘When am I going to be able to go to delivery suite?’, says Mel, an impossible one to answer as it depends on many variables.
Mel says an important part of the MCA job is keeping up morale for those women who are desperate to have their babies, plus their partners, and for staff too.
When patients leave for the delivery area, their notes go with them and bed spaces are prepared for the next patient.
The EPR will transform many of these everyday tasks. Instead of recording admission information on paper, and observations on MEOWS charts, Mel will enter them directly into the EPR, giving the wider clinical team immediate access to the latest information.
One of the biggest changes will be no longer having to wait for paper notes to become available. Patient records will be accessible electronically wherever they are needed, with their health information following women seamlessly through their maternity journey. By reducing time spent with different systems, searching for and completing notes, the EPR will give MCAs more time for what matters most – supporting women and their families and working with colleagues to deliver safe, high-quality care.