Multi-professional approach delivers results in obstetrics training

Source: Alamy

Birthplace of new ideas: interdisciplinary work can make a real difference

“I’d do it for another three years, absolutely no question about it, but I think you’re only allowed one term,” laughed Tim Draycott when asked if he would consider applying for a second Health Foundation Improvement Science Fellowship.

Mr Draycott, clinical senior lecturer at the University of Bristol and consultant obstetrician at North Bristol NHS Trust, benefited from a fellowship – which offers senior postdoctoral candidates three years’ research funding and a tailored leadership development programme among other things – to develop the PROMPT (practical obstetric multi-professional training) course.

The course has been associated with improved knowledge, communication and teamwork in dealing with childbirth emergencies.

His work, along with that of two other Bristol researchers, contributed to the university recently winning a Queen’s Anniversary Prize.

“The main benefit was being [given] three years of head space – thinking time – which has been great because in the middle of a busy NHS job, it’s difficult sometimes to think deeply and in a sophisticated way about the intervention we’ve actually arrived [at],” he said.

The fellowship, which brought practitioners and social science academics together, allowed them to get a “broader, better, deeper understanding of how to make a difference”.

“I’ve spent a lifetime training to better understand how to look after women in labour, but you leave behind other areas for which other people have incredible expertise – we can work together and harness that expertise,” he said. He said such interdisciplinary working needed to be more prevalent.

“If practitioners could work with other academics more broadly, I think there’s something really exciting in it,” he said. “The trouble is we all live in silos and ivory towers. By working altogether [and] understanding intervention…even more mothers [are saved].”

The fellowship and the backing of the Health Foundation – a charity working to improve the quality of healthcare in the UK – was invaluable, he said.

“They’re completely independent and that makes them a very powerful organisation,” he said. “For example, the standard research streams in the NHS would not fund three years’ thinking time for some projects. They also find it very difficult to fund a multi-professional group of academics and practitioners.”

The “external validation” of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize not only affirms the decision to award the fellowship, he said, but also has an added effect of extending his work beyond the UK.

“Outside the UK it has put, literally, a royal polish on our work,” he said. “It visibly has made a difference on our work for overseas audiences – India, China, Singapore, Malaysia.”

The Health Foundation’s involvement through the fellowship also meant that the project could gain a foothold at “high policymaking levels”.

“If you’re a working obstetrician, albeit in an academic unit in Bristol, you’re not automatically at the top table of policymaking,” he said.

“What the Health Foundation has been really useful for is the weight of their organisation to get traction at that kind of level.”

john.elmes@tsleducation.com