Rachel Coleman

I qualified as a midwife in 1996 and worked as a community and hospital based midwife in London, prior to relocating to Bath. I am also a registered nurse, having qualified from a London teaching Hospital in 1993. My nursing experience included working for two years in acute and colorectal surgery at a London Hospital.  I am currently a community midwife in an NHS Trust with a birthrate of 4500/annum. The Trust has a central delivery suite, two standalone birth centres, two maternity units and a homebirth rate above the national average. My role is providing antenatal, intra partum and post-natal care throughout these settings.

During my career I have developed advanced skills in high dependency care, fetal heart monitoring, epidural care, ventouse practitioner, newborn life support, newborn infant physical examination, advanced perineal repair and IV cannulation /phlebotomy/drugs. I have in depth experience in pregnancy loss both clinically and in writing guidelines in response to stillbirth and neonatal death charity (SANDS) recommendations and The National Bereavement Pathway, as well as leading multidisciplinary reviews and reports for baby’s who suffer hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). I have led improvements in clinical practice and education through sharing learning from serious incidents and reporting systems. I have had the responsibility of writing and implementing clinical guidance in line with local and national findings, in addition to leading reports such as Root Cause Analysis (RCA), and perinatal mortality review tool (PMRT). I have produced RCA reports for two Trusts and am able to share learning to improve safety from these in a discreet and professional manner for staff and families. In addition, I have led on quarterly Maternity Governance reports and on the Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) maternity data for two Trusts. I have written Trust education programmes within maternity services to ensure that learning from significant events is shared throughout maternity services.

My experiences as a Quality Improvement and Education Lead and a Quality and Safety Matron  has provided me with the opportunity to review and align local guidance to national guidance in a timely manner. I have completed an Advance Practitioner Pathway-Masters Module in Leadership and Innovation and in Research at the West of England University and am an advocate of continued professional development in order to continually improve care and safety.  I have an excellent clinical skill set in acute and community midwifery and within my previous roles I have been a fetal monitoring midwifery lead for a trust where I performed daily fetal monitoring rounds in the acute birth centre, planned and implemented fetal monitoring training and led reviews of adverse events including those where fetal monitoring has potentially caused harm. In addition, I have undertaken medico-legal training on the NHSR Early Notification Scheme and I am in a position to assist with casework of this nature. 

I accept instructions from both claimant and defendant solicitors and insurers. I have undergone formal training in the medico-legal process and am fully aware of my responsibilities under Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) pertaining to expert witnesses.