My day started with another walk around the lake. I started slightly later today and it was a gorgeous morning. I was due in for my first maternity shift at 14.30 until 22.00 today and I was really looking forward to it. I spent the morning catching up with friends and family, filling people in on what I had been up to.

I met Sigrun at 14.00 in the lobby so I could go and get my uniform. The system here was very clever and efficient. You head to the uniform room where hundreds of pairs of clean scrubs were stored. You swipe your ID card, pick what size you want and it comes through a shoot for you. Everyone wears white scrubs regardless of what their role is which does make it difficult to know what staff member you are speaking to, but I kind of like the white scrubs, they look smart - potentially a nightmare for delivery though!

I was working with a lovely midwife called Ada today. She gave me a quick tour of the delivery suite along with showing me their systems and paperwork. They are paper light, so the majority of documentation is done on the computers with a few bits of paperwork for things like a MEOWS chart which as then scanned in at the end of the postnatal period and added to the documentation package. I was surprised to see they use STAN CTG’s and have Omniview in the main office, I wasn’t aware it was so international. They documented their hourly interpretations on the CTG which seemed to be work well and very efficiently.

One thing I found interesting is that they grade women as being low risk, medium risk or high risk. All women receive 1:1 care in labour. Low risk women go to the midwifery led until on the 7th floor (known as the 7th Heaven), then medium and high risk women stay on the delivery suite. Women considered medium risk include mild-moderate pre-eclampsia, diabetic women, and >35 BMI to name a few examples, these women have a 20 minute CTG in every hour of labour, if this is normal, the remaining 40 minutes is intermittent auscultation. This encourages the women to mobilise. The high risk women then have continuous CTG monitoring in labour.

I have 5 more shifts on the maternity ward so will observe lots more of how their unit runs over that time. Tomorrow, I am shadowing the air ambulance and although I’m a terrible flyer... I’m extremely excited!!!