Miss Josephine Frame
Josephine qualified in 2014 and worked as a rotational midwife in all areas of maternity at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, until moving to focus on community and caseload midwifery in 2015. This included spending a year working as a specialist midwife, providing care for some of the most vulnerable women, and their babies, in Southeast London.
Since 2017, she has been working as a Practice Development Midwife ensuring that all maternity staff (midwives, obstetricians, anaesthetists and support staff) become, and remain, highly skilled in managing emergency and life-threatening situations, as well as working effectively and safely as a multidisciplinary team. In addition to the improvement in service quality, the success of managing this operation has guaranteed the Trust’s achievement and attainment of the relevant targets within the NHSR Maternity Incentive Scheme.
Josephine has led the restructure of the Trust’s professional development pathway for maternity clinical support staff, as well as being integral in the digitalisation of documentation within the service. She also has a keen interest in public health promotion and public relations which led to her being a finalist at the 2019 BJM Awards “Use of technology in Midwifery” for developing the maternity service’s online presence by creating an accessible and relatable midwife avatar that the public could engage with via various social media platforms.
In her spare time, Josephine enjoys swimming, baking and embroidery. She also makes her own jewellery and has a keen interest in crafting and upcycling.
Reason for applying for the scheme
Josephine’s undergraduate dissertation considered if there was potential to utilise social media within maternity care. She explored opportunities to improve accessibility to clinicians for personalised advice as a means of improving healthcare equity with minimal additional resources and financial impact. This, along with her passion for public health, ultimately sparked Josephine’s interest in sustainability within midwifery.
Throughout her career, Josephine has acknowledged the positive influence midwifery care can reach; beyond the woman or birthing person and their infant, service improvements and external partnerships can also improve the health of the wider community. In recent years, sustainability within midwifery has focused on staff retention. By supporting the streamlining of systems and digitalisation of records, whilst continuing to provide individualised care, Josephine is interested to discover if embedding the Greener NHS ethos within maternity services can also positively impact the workforce, their wellbeing and job satisfaction.
Josephine is excited to develop her skills in leadership and has confidence that the Chief Sustainability Officer’s Clinical Fellow Scheme will aid her transition from championing and implementing change, to identifying and leading sustainable QI projects with the Greener NHS agenda at the core. In doing so, Josephine hopes to make an effective contributing to our evolving health care service whilst preserving our environment for current and future generations.
