Pregnant women in safe hands with new Bury antenatal service

Date published: 20 November 2011

Pregnant women in Bury who require closer monitoring during their pregnancy, but are well enough to avoid an overnight stay in hospital, can now be seen in Fairfield General Hospital’s new Antenatal Day Unit (ANDU).

Catherine Cairns, 49 from Rochdale, a midwife who has been caring for local women and babies for 25 years, has provided her expertise to lead the new service which opened in Bury in September.

The Antenatal Day Unit (ANDU) will remain in place at Fairfield General Hospital after the planned inpatient maternity service changes, which are going ahead in early March 2012 as part of Making it Better, are complete.

The changes will mean that the option to give birth will no longer be available at the hospital, with overnight maternity services transferring to North Manchester General and The Royal Bolton Hospitals, but all routine antenatal and postnatal care will remain at Fairfield General Hospital.

The ANDU will play a vital role in ensuring that women with more complex health needs are closely monitored, whilst limiting the need for them to travel to hospitals outside the area for appointments.

Catherine Cairns, midwife at Fairfield General Hospital, said: “The new ANDU offers pregnant women in Bury a facility where they can be monitored for longer than is possible in the community without necessarily being admitted to hospital. It means that we can carry out procedures in order to assess the well-being of mother and baby, such as monitoring blood pressure over a couple of hours, performing blood tests and recording the baby ‘s heart rate. At the end of their short stay women can go home reassured that they have been properly checked out with appropriate management plans in place.”

The service is currently in a temporary location within the hospital but plans are in place to provide a permanent facility for the service following next year’s changes. The service is fully operational and is provided every day from Monday to Friday. It is receiving regular referrals from community midwives and GPs.

Catherine’s Midwifery career to date has taken her all around the Bury and Rossendale areas since starting at Fairfield General Hospital as a newly qualified midwife in 1986. In 2007 she graduated with a First class Bsc. (Hons.) Degree in Midwifery Practice and was Divisional winner, Nurse /Midwife of the Year 2010 in the Pennine Acute Staff Awards Event. Catherine’s commitment to Midwifery has continued in her role as Practice Placement Midwife, in which she was responsible for Student Midwives from Salford University while out on placement at Fairfield General Hospital.

Catherine believes it’s important that pregnant women are aware that their routine appointments will stay local, saying: “Regardless of where pregnant women from Bury are expecting to give birth, they can still expect their routine appointments to take place here at Fairfield General Hospital, local clinics or at home. Bury-based midwives like me will still be here to care for women before and after the birth of their baby.”

The changes to maternity services at Fairfield General Hospital are part of the Making it Better (MiB) reorganisation of children’s and maternity services across Greater Manchester. The MiB changes have been designed by doctors, midwives and nurses and will concentrate specialist skills and expertise in fewer, larger children’s and maternity units to make services safer and improve staffing levels. It will enable the NHS in Greater Manchester to improve services for women, children, babies and families.

The Making it Better changes were agreed by Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) across Greater Manchester in December 2006 and by the then Secretary for State for Health in 2007 following extensive clinical and public consultation.