My Topol fellowship problem / project:
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is a tertiary maternity unit, delivering over 7500 babies every year. At present the Trust uses hybrid documentation system of predominantly paper-based maternity notes alongside a limited digital care record. We are currently working to create a fully digitised maternity service by implementing the Badgernet system across the Trust. This is a complete digital maternity system by Clevermed, including a patient portal for women to access and interact with their own record. My fellowship project is to work as a Digital Obstetrician in a team delivering this large-scale digital transformation project. Initially I will be involved in workflow and process mapping and working with the team around system configuration to make Badgernet work for different clinical areas. I will then address the issue of staff engagement and training: my aim is to engage with clinicians and to create high quality and clinically-relevant digital training packages, focusing on staff experience and patient care. Maternity staff at the trust have previously fed back that they often do not feel well trained in digital care technology, which affects their job satisfaction and wellbeing. A common thread throughout my project is “winning hearts and minds” about what will be a big change for the unit. I am particularly interested in stakeholder engagement and exploring how to educate and enthuse the maternity workforce in new ways of digital working. My vision is to use the skills and experience gained through the Topol Digital Fellowship to explore different ways of doing this within my role.
About me
I am an ST6 Doctor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, working at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. After completing an English degree at Cambridge University, I graduated in medicine from King’s College London in 2011 and began training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology within the Thames Valley region in 2013. During my training I have gained valuable experience of rotating through different jobs and adapting to many new digital systems, leading to my interest in staff engagement in digital solutions. Within my specialty I am passionate about maternity care, particularly the care of pregnant women with high-risk medical conditions and, alongside my clinical and digital roles, I currently sit as Trainee Representative on the Thames Valley Maternal Medicine Network committee. Since January 2023, I have taken on the newly-created role of “Digital Registrar for Maternity” in Oxford – part of a growing Maternity Digital Team, working towards the full digitisation of the maternity care record in our Trust. This work and how we accomplish it will be the focus of my Topol Fellowship. In the future I am also interested in participating in networks of other Digital Obstetricians and exploring the many ways in which digital technology could enhance maternity care, including collaboration with our patient population to improve access, remote monitoring and facilitating the provision of networked maternity care.