What does a midwife do?

In this explainer episode, we’ve asked Kate Stanbury, research midwife on the Generation Study, to tell us more about the vital role that midwives play.

You can also find a series of short videos explaining some of the common terms you might encounter about genomics on our YouTube channel.

If you’ve got any questions, or have any other topics you’d like us to explain, let us know on [email protected].

You can download the transcript or read it below.

Florence: What does a midwife do? My name is Florence Cornish, and today I'm joined by Kate Stanbury, who is a research midwife working on the Generation Study, and she is going to be explaining the vital role that midwives play.

So, to start off with Kate, I'm sure that most of our listeners will have heard of midwives before or maybe even like come across them in healthcare settings, but it would be good to hear from you more about what a midwife actually does.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. So, a midwife is someone who provides care and support to birthing people and their families during pregnancy, labour, and after birth as well. A lot of people just think of midwives as delivering babies, but we do a lot of other stuff around that as well.

There are lots of different types of midwives as well, so we've got community midwives that might come out to your home and see you and your baby. We've got specialist midwives who might have a certain medical condition that they're experts in. And then we also have people like myself who are research midwives as well.

Florence: So, you talked about a couple of different types of midwives there. Could you tell me more about the specific type of midwife that you are?

Kate: Yeah, so a research midwife, as the name suggests, does research, so I also look after women during their pregnancy as well. A lot of the research that we do relates to sort of high-risk pregnancies, and so we approach women for specific research studies that might have a particular characteristic that we are investigating.

We also recruit patients to these studies. We look after them during their pregnancies when they're taking part in the studies, and then we follow them up after their birth as well to collect data and see if what we've done as part of the research has had an impact.

Florence: And so you are working on the Generation Study, and if any listeners want to learn more about that, then they can check out our previous Genomics 101 episode, What is the Generation Study?

Kate, could you tell me a little bit more about what led you to become a midwife? Like what was the journey that you took to get to this point?

Kate: Yeah, so I started my degree in midwifery straight out of college. So, I was quite young at the time, I was 18. I went to university, did a three-year degree to get a bachelor's of midwifery.

That is probably the most common route that people go through in terms of to become a midwife, but some people choose to do adult nursing first, and then they can do a conversion course into midwifery, which is about 18 months long as well. So that's usually the most common route.

I was sort of drawn to the occupation because one of my close friends, her mum was a midwife, so I used to see her in their lounge. They used to have lots of cards and things that she would display from patients that she'd looked after, which was really nice.

Florence: And so what makes you passionate about working in the Generation Study and what motivates you in your role?

Kate: I think being able to have an impact on how we can improve care, I think that's really important. Obviously everything that we do is evidence-based, so that's what really drew me to become a research midwife and being able to take part in research studies that we can look back on in the future and say, “oh, I was part of that, and because of that we've been able to improve the lives of families and babies going forward.”

That's really important to me.

Florence: Yeah. And, and just building off of that, have there been any specific moments that have like stood out to you during your time working on the study?

Kate: Yeah, I think being able to see it from its starting point, so as a research midwife as well as working on the Generation Study. I sort of see people in clinics, I tell them about the study and then they might sign up to it.

 But then the other half of my role is a re regional results coordinator for the Generation Study. So I might then see that patient come through to me with a condition suspected result, and being able to follow that family through their sort of patient journey, from consent taking part in the study to getting their baby into NHS care, that potentially we might be able to give treatments really quickly for a baby that might have a really rare genetic problem.

And being able to see that that process works really well and improves those outcomes for that baby and that family. That's really, really something that's amazing to see and what I'm really looking forward to in the future as well.

Florence: Yeah, I can imagine that like getting to experience the kind of like end to end, like see it.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Florence: Super cool.

Kate: We don't often get to follow the babies up in my line of work, so it's really nice.

Florence: Yeah. Yeah. I'd also be curious to know has being involved in the Generation Study changed how you think about the space? So whether that's genomics or research or even your role as a midwife, do you see any of those things differently now?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. I think before I started this role with the Generation Study, genomics was sort of there, but I didn't really know the full details and like much in depth knowledge about genomics and how that could impact on people's health and their pregnancies and their health going forward into the future.

But since doing this job, I think it's really opened my eyes to how much of an impact it can have and how much I think it could potentially improve the lives of generations to come.

Florence: Well, thank you so much, Kate. I think we'll finish there, but I really appreciate you taking the time to come on our podcast.

Kate: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Florence: If you want to hear more explainer episodes like this, you can find them on our website at www.genomicsengland.co.uk or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for listening.