County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
Maternal Medicine Specialist Midwife
The closing date is 14 July 2026
The Maternal Medicine Specialist Midwife will play a pivotal role in leading the implementation and delivery of the Maternal Care Bundle (MCB) across County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT). The MCB establishes best practice standards across five key clinical areas associated with maternal mortality and morbidity, with the overarching aim of improving maternal outcomes and reducing health inequalities.
This specialist role will provide strategic leadership and coordination for the implementation of the MCB across both acute and community maternity services. The postholder will be responsible for developing and overseeing a Trust-wide approach to delivery, ensuring alignment with national standards and local quality improvement priorities.
Main duties of the job
Given the multidisciplinary nature of maternal medicine, the role will require effective collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders, including obstetric, medical and anaesthetic teams, emergency and ambulance services, mental health services, primary care colleagues, and regional networks. A whole‑system approach will therefore be essential to achieving sustainable improvements in care.
A key initial responsibility will be to establish a baseline assessment of current practice against the five elements of the Maternal Care Bundle:
- Venous Thromboembolism (VTE)
- Pre‑hospital and Acute Care
- Epilepsy in Pregnancy
- Maternal Mental Health
- Obstetric Haemorrhage
These elements have been identified nationally due to their significant contribution to maternal mortality and morbidity, and because there is considerable opportunity to reduce unwarranted variation in care.
NHS Provider Trusts are required to achieve full implementation of the Maternal Care Bundle by March 2027.
Job responsibilities
The Maternal Medicine Specialist Midwife will be responsible for implementing:
- Benchmarking current compliance and developing an improvement plan with trajectories for sign‑off by the service, care group and trust board.
- Providing regular reports to the service, care group and trust board on implementation against this plan and trajectories, so that the board can oversee, support and challenge local delivery.
- Ensuring that where local plans do not meet nationally recommended pathways, timescales or performance, or where local delivery subsequently deviates from these plans, this is escalated within the service, care group and trust and, if required, to the regional NHS England team.
- Engaging with maternal medicine networks and cooperating with the local networks protocol for the management and referral of medical problems in pregnancy.
- Local reporting of routine care data relating to key process and outcome measures for each element as defined in the national implementation tool.
- Providing equitable and expert support for women with pre‑existing or pregnancy‑induced significant medical issues, ensuring sustainability of that care wherever in the region they may live, and providing local best practice care or appropriate onward referral as required.
- Coordinating care for service users requiring support from either of the specialist centres alongside services delivered within the region.
- Managing the maternal medicine service within CDDFT, providing clinical and professional management and leadership, ensuring assessment of care needs and development, implementation, and evaluation of programmes of care are maintained to a high standard.
- Managing reporting aspects of the maternal medicine service and ensuring cost‑effective use of resources.
Equity and Inclusion
We particularly welcome applications from disabled and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates as BAME and disabled people are currently under‑represented.
Person Specification
Statutory Registration
- Registered Midwife with NMC
Special Requirement
- Commitment to drive service improvement
- Creative and innovative thinker, objective with high level of integrity
- Adaptable and flexible approach to work
- Able to foster positive relationships with co‑workers and work across professional and organisational boundaries
- Able to motivate others
- Able to deal with difficult and complex situations
Qualifications
- Registered Midwife masters degree or demonstrable evidence they are working at that level
- Recognised teaching/assessing qualification
- Evidence of continued professional development
- Willing to undergo training as necessary
- Knowledge and understanding of relevant National Services Frameworks
- Knowledge of Trust guidelines and policies
- Knowledge of care pathways for women with complex health need
- Awareness of current issues in midwifery
- Capable of lateral thinking
- Influencing and negotiation
- Skills in identifying and securing provision of training needs for the team
- Highly developed communication skills, written and verbal
- Delegation abilities and excellent time management skills
- Well‑developed problem solving and decision‑making skills
- Flexibility/adaptability to meet the needs of the service
- Possess individual credibility
- Approachable
- Has strategic vision and demonstrates innovation in practice
- Ability to work under pressure, thinking and acting coherently and with respect for others
- Manage and identify stress in self and others
- Excellent written and verbal skills
- Ability to organise and prioritise own and other workloads
- Understanding of skills and knowledge required to lead and develop team members
- Resource management
- Ability to take the lead in the promotion of evidence‑based practice
- PowerPoint, Outlook
Experience
- Experience of managing and leading a team
- Current issues on healthcare
- Experience of leading, motivation and supporting a team
- Experience of providing training
- Excellent presentation skills
- Experience of delegating workload and monitoring progress
- Evidence of managerial development
- Clinical audit and standard setting
- Experience of managing resources
- Experience of training staff
- Experience of working within Maternal Medicine
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
£49,387 to £56,515 a year per annum / pro rata
