Project leads, Dr Umesh Dashora (ABCD) & Ms Gail Johnson (Royal College Midwives)
The diabetes-in-pregnancy work is Diabetes Care Trust's first sponsored project which was conceived by Huw Alban Davies, chair of the DCT and developed and completed with a positive result. The work was was written with the benefit of a survey of the educational needs of midwives, composed on the basis of results from a freedom of information request received from 110 NHS trusts and replies to a questionnaire received from 698 midwives. http://www.diabetologists-abcd.org.uk/Research/DCT_report_final_05012018.pdf and https://bjd-abcd.com/index.php/bjd/article/view/339
ABCD helped produce an online diabetes course for midwives for the Royal College of Midwives as part of our commitment to work with other health care professionals to improve care of people with diabetes. Umesh Dashora and Dinesh Nagi from ABCD wrote the module while Jacquie Simpson and Deborah Burns, Diabetes Midwife Leads and Belfast H&SC Trust reviewed the content. Gail Johnson from RSM facilitated the project. On the last count 320 midwives accessed the course within 4 months of launch with more than 56% completing the course.
The module was launched in October 2019 and within one month more than 100 midwives had completed the module and received a certificate.
Diabetes Care Trust awarded £15,708 to fund the survey and numerous hours of expert advice in composing the module by ABCD diabetologists, Drs. Umesh Dashora and Dinesh Nagi.
Positive comments and suggestions included
- ‘Great module, thank you’,
- I think it would be helpful to separate gestational diabetes and pre-existing diabetes more as this could make the information clearer. Great module, though, thank you.’
- ‘very informative module and useful for my training and professional development’
- 'I found this course really beneficial to my learning. However, some of the terminology within the course I found difficult to understand as a first year student midwife’
- ‘I found this module informative and educational. It is also targeted at the right level for midwives’
- ‘I have used this module as a refresher for my learning and as a revision tool’
- ‘I have found it helpful and informative’
- 'I found this module short but thought provoking and stimulating’
- ‘It updated my knowledge and will improve my clinical care’
- ‘The course was excellent and informative for a new student’
- ‘Very useful ,some of the links a little difficult to navigate back from (using kindle)’.
ABCD will work with RCM to work on the feedback received to produce the second version of this online course. The module is freely available to all RCM members via www.rcm.org.uk