Reflecting on a fabulous May 2021 and #IDM2021

As we come to the end of May 2021, I wanted to reflect on a few of the things which have come to fruition.

Of course early on we celebrated International Day of the Midwife 2021. Invest in midwives…The best is yet to come! #IDM2021

#IDM2021

On this #IDM2021 (May the 5th) I was thrilled to be able to announce some awesome things we have been working on for some time now. First, I was able to share our @IolantheMidwife ‘Midwives Award’ won on #InternationalDayoftheMidwife for our work on Substance use in Midwifery populations. You can still participate in this research until September 2021 – Details below. Please share this link with midwifery teams: https://bit.ly/UKMidwivesPSU

I was also able to share my appointment as #NursingNowChallenge midwifery champion!

Read more here: https://bit.ly/3h0t8X6

I hope that this will be enable us to raise the profile of midwives around the world.

Furthermore, on the 6th May 2021 I had the privilege of being the invited speaker at the 102nd Irish Nurses & Midwives Organisation@INMO_IRL (@INMO_IRL) Annual Delegates Conference. #INMOADC. I shared our work ‘Exploring Problematic Substance Use in Nursing and Midwifery Populations’ – A warm audience as ever!

Thank you for having me.

#INMOADC

Then on the 18th of May 2021 I tuned in to watch the policy dialogue presenting the findings from #SoWMy2021 to Member States in an effort to encourage sustainable investment in the midwifery workforce. This was a really inspiring event where I was able to make some really valuable connections – thank you.

Other than May being my birthday month, May 2021 has been absolutely awesome. Moreover, I have been able to settle in in my new role as an RCM Fellow! Read more here

“Excited by what we may achieve together as this fellowship brings forward new opportunities…the best is certainly yet to come” says @SallyPezaro from @covcampus receiving RCM Fellowship #rcmedconf21 #education

Now that some of the restrictions are easing it seems that some publications are able to move forward again in the process of peer review. As such, I will be sharing some new publications with you all soon. I also have lots of bid writing plans for next month alongside teaching. A summer of collaborations ahead.

First, I am grateful for the opportunity to continue and finish journey with @OxfordSBS … because midwifery #LeadershipMatters

Until next time…Look after yourselves and each other 

Follow me via @SallyPezaro; The Academic Midwife; This blog

Boats On An Ocean

Looking at the lives of healthcare workers through the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, this project explores their ‘human’ experiences – in contrast to the public and media portrayal of them as ‘heroes’.

The audio artwork is the representation of the stories, experiences and emotions of eight healthcare workers from Coventry and across the UK, gathered during an online creative workshop. From this, we identified seven themes, including the theme of the ‘hero’ narrative. While some might consider the label of ‘hero’ as praise, many of our healthcare worker participants explained that it sometimes caused feelings of guilt. A shift in focus is needed to recognise the emotional and physical toll for individuals. Adequate support is needed to help healthcare workers find meaning in their experiences.

LINK: https://coventrycreates.co.uk/project/boats-on-an-ocean/

#BoatsOnAnOcean

#BoatsOnAnOcean – Our audio art piece showcased via the #CoventryCreates digital exhibition….#CityofCulture2021

Click here to see and hear this work

Great to work with @KerryWykes, @LouiseMoodyCU, @lizzesparkes, @YourOldChina & Bharti Patel to represent healthcare workers experiences of #COVID19 in this way!

Follow me via @SallyPezaro; The Academic Midwife; This blog

Until next time…Look after yourselves and each other 

New Educational Tools Launched to Support Childbearing with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders

On the 5th of May (International Day of the Midwife – #IDM2020) 2020 – The year of the nurse and the midwife, the @hEDStogether team launched new educational tools to support childbearing with hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD). Co-incidentally, May is also Ehlers Danlos Syndromes and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders awareness month. You can view the online launch of these tools along with our other @GOLDMidwifery presentations here at the GOLD Online Education Midwifery Conference 2019/2020.

Citation: Pezaro, S., Pearce, G., & Magee, P. (2020). New Educational Tools to Support Childbearing With hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders. GOLD Online Midwifery Conference. May 5^th.https://www.goldlearning.com/ce-library/all-lectures/new-educational-tools-detail

The final tools comprised:

• An i-learn module launched by the Royal College of Midwives to their members (search under the letter ‘H’ for hypermobility in the online library)
• A maternity tool freely available for download and wider use
• An infomercial to raise awareness and mobilise knowledge in relation childbearing with hEDS/HSD

We were also able to launch our own website – hEDSTogether.com and keep everyone up to date with the project via @hEDStogether

We have made these tools freely available where possible. You can visit the project page to learn more. If you are using them to create an impact in the world, please tell us about it via the contact pages hosted at hEDSTogether.com.

Useful hashtags to follow on this topic include:

#EDSmaternity

 #hEDStogether 

#EhlersDanlosSyndrome

#myEDSchallenge

#myHSDchallenge

#EDSAwarenessMonth

#raisingawarenesstogether

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the launch and co-created these tools in partnership with us!…Let’s keep putting our #hEDSTogether via research!

Follow me via @SallyPezaro; The Academic Midwife; This blog

Until next time…Look after yourselves and each other 💚💙💜❤

Public engagement with a @pintofscience

The annual Pint of Science festival highlights the importance of communicating and engaging the public with science. With our latest grant for Enterprise, Exchange and Engagement Activities in Knowledge Mobilisation between patients, maternity care staff, third sector organisations and academia on childbearing with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, this is what we are keen to do.

Public engagement with pint of science allowed us to share our #EDSMaternity findings with a wider public audience. A few audience members identified themselves as medical and nursing students in particular…all enjoying a pint!

To ensure that we could engage with as many people as possible, we also filmed our public engagement lecture to share online.

Feedback was positive, and our public engagement in research worked out well in this case. Here, we were also able to see how the public responded to our findings as they were laid out for a lay audience. It was interesting to note how others began to situate themselves in the research whilst reflecting on their own experiences.

If you would like to follow the progress of work going forward..

Follow me via @SallyPezaro; The Academic Midwife; This blog

Until next time…Look after yourselves and each other 💚💙💜❤

Research Impact: Demonstrating, creating, capturing and evaluating

For me, doing research is a very interesting and stimulating thing to do. A journey of learning and discovery. Yet my motivation to do research is not solely based upon self fulfillment. Research is only worth doing unless it means something. It has to make a difference. Create change. It has to have an IMPACT. So with our latest project, my team (@GemmaSPearce, @DrEReinhold) and I decided to collect evidence around what impact our latest open access paper…

‘Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome during pregnancy, birth and beyond’

had upon childbearing women with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS). As it turns out.. the answer was ‘quite a lot!’

We collected Tweets, emails, Facebook messages, feedback, download data and other testimonials to estimate the impact our work. The powerful magnitude of this impact data translated into us being awarded ‘Highly Commended’ status in the category of ‘Team Impact Commitment’ via ‘The Real Impact Awards’ hosted by @EmeraldGlobal.

The Real Impact Awards celebrate the commitment to impact by the research community across the globe.

Along with the many messages we received from midwives who felt that this paper had enabled them to improve their midwifery practice, the British Journal of Midwifery (@BJMidwifery) kindly made this article openly accessible, meaning that those outside of academic institutions could also use it to instigate change.

 

Our article has been downloaded over 12,000 times so far.

 

 

“So my friend was formally diagnosed with hEDS yesterday- not sure if you remember but I read your article and gave her it to take to her GP as it sounded exactly like her. She has 2 teenage girls so this formal diagnosis is so important! Thank you so much as without you raising the profile she wouldn’t have even been investigated – It is honestly all down to your article “

“This mirrors my own pregnancy. I cried today, knowing that this research could save families so much heartbreak.”

All of the inspirational stories of impact commitment are now presented in the…

Real Impact Showcase Book.

“I’m showing this to my GP tomorrow. It’s the first time since the birth of my daughter and diagnosis 5 years ago that I’ve felt it possible to consider having the 2nd child I’ve longed for! I didn’t have the knowledge to advocate for proper care, now I do, thanks to new research.”

We are ‘Research Impact Ambassadors’

“I read this article with interest as clinical midwife and a midwifery researcher, and I realized that one of my friends had so many symptoms – local anaesthetic not working, severe PGP during pregnancy etc, so gave her the article which prompted her to request investigations!”

The York Research Impact Statement (PDF , 286kb) describes research impact as…

“…when the knowledge generated by our research contributes to, benefits and influences society, culture, our environment and the economy”.

For more information about impact in research, I recommend following this blog by @JulieEBayley, this blog by @profmarkreed..and these Hashtags:

#researchimpact

#research

#impact

#WhyWeDoResearch

#iamresearch

As a result of our impact activities, we have been able to secure several invited talks and an invited publication to update readers on the new evidence we have been pulling together. We have also won further funding to carry out more research, and I have received several nominations to become the British Journal of Midwifery’s Midwife of the year 2019… So watch this space, because we are working toward many more exciting things for the future.

If you would like to follow the progress of work going forward..

Follow me via @SallyPezaro; The Academic Midwife; This blog

Until next time…Look after yourselves and each other 💚💙💜❤