Top honours for St Luke's 'bright sparks'
The team from St Luke's Hospital maternity services with their award
SUPPORTING the needs of new mums has earned our local maternity hospital a national award.
St Luke's General Hospital, Carlow/Kilkenny's maternity department were delighted to be selected for a 'Bright Spark' National Innovation Award 2024 in the best nursing and midwifery project category for their ‘Muma Postnatal Hub' service. Speaking after the event, Ann Margaret Hogan, director of midwifery at St Luke’s General Hospital, said: “We’re delighted to win this award. It’s a huge support to the women who give birth in our hospital. It also showcases the expertise we have within the team in St Luke’s. We’re very lucky to have such an enthusiastic and expert staff.” The new service, which was commissioned by the National Women and Infants Health Programme (NWIHP), is designed to pivot around the needs of women, promote early intervention and signpost additional services in the postnatal period. The midwifery team saw this as a great opportunity to embrace a new way of working, engaging with the expertise of designers to implement this new service.
The team used journey maps and empathy maps to identify what the problems were that needed to be addressed by this new service; this allowed them to develop an innovative service to include support, advice and signposting on postnatal services available to mothers and families both in the hospital and the community.
The service is based in both counties and complements existing services.
