Being a maternity service leader during the pandemic was challenging
The overarching theme and challenges faced by maternity care leaders resonated strongly throughout the interviews. With little initially known about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its impact on pregnant women and newborns, leaders were under pressure to quickly respond despite the uncertainties and ensure that quality care could continue to be provided, as explained here:
“I think as a clinician, I know that one of the hardest—and again this comes back to uncertainty and change—one of the hardest things as a clinician is to sit in uncertainty and to be able to say to someone, “I don’t know … I don’t know what’s going to happen” (Medical leader A).
Despite working in different health services, the leaders faced similar challenges, including the need to rapidly adapt and develop specific and tailored guidelines to respond to COVID-19 while managing and supporting the workforce through unprecedented times. Many were working from home, at least some of the time, and they described the lack of social connections and interconnectedness with staff as one of the biggest challenges, as one participant explained, “I feel a bit disconnected as a group, so we are trying to reconnect, because it can be a lonely job as a unit manager and you don’t have your other peers to catch up with that we would do most days …. you feel a little bit isolated, even though you are at work” (Unit manager A). They struggled with the rapid shift in care giving: “in maternity, we want to have that connection, we want to be able to talk and, you know, touch and all of those things and not being able to do that is a very horrible feeling” (Medical leader C).
The sub-themes described below detail challenges that were experienced, exploring what happened as they needed to make rapid decisions, adapt and shift services, filter and translate information and support people, often all at the same time.
Needing to be a rapid decision maker
The first 6 months of the pandemic required rapid and critical decision making by those in leadership roles. Leaders of maternity services needed to translate decisions made at the federal and state government level into policy and practice often very quickly. Many described struggling with ever-changing decision making, frequently without warning “we’ve been madly trying to get our heads around it. Most people have got some plans in place now at the hospital and my practice and it’s … what is going to happen now?” (Medical leader B).
Developing COVID-19 response guidelines for their health facilities was a key priority, and leaders initially worked with other departments and colleagues to do so. For example, one participant initially said, “what I saw was people collaborating straight away, being really supportive of each other, personally, professionally and I think that also helped some of the units [who] had started having the conversations but hadn’t yet put anything on paper” (Medical leader D). This leader described how this collaborative approach to guideline development continued and reported that increased uniformity assisted this rapid decision-making process, “we’ve found it to be relatively useful to have the [state government] group to come together and generate guidance, albeit often based more on opinion than hard scientific facts, but it’s something at least” (Medical leader D). However, obtaining evidence to inform these rapid decisions was not always easy: “I think it would have been helpful to have some more guidance, we basically focused mainly on what the Department [of Health] told us, but then … people were quoting the Australian obstetric college, and they were quoting the United Kingdom obstetric colleague, you know you get so many different buy-ins that in the end of the day, I felt that that was the most frustrating part” (Unit manager A). This also changed over time as new guidance was released and new organisations were established and started providing guidance over the first 16 months. Leaders also had to ensure that these guidelines could be easily understood by staff. One leader described taking lengthy guidance from obstetric colleges to create flowcharts: “… the people at the bedside are saying the flowcharts are what they’re really interested in, something simple that they can follow” (Midwifery leader C).
Once developed, the guidelines needed to be implemented as quickly as possible, which created constant disruption for their staff. One leader explained: “I did feel like our brains were going a million miles an hour and we were a small group making all these changes and plans, but because every day the guidance from the government kept changing. We felt that we couldn’t continuously update the staff, it makes it very confusing for them, because it was already confusing for us… we are very mindful not to send too many things out at once. But it always seemed to come to Friday afternoons that we send out memos with changes and that you have to inform staff over the weekend separately, so they are knowing of what they need to do” (Medical leader E). Over the 12 months, guidance kept changing and again this required rapid decision making – what to change and what to keep was a common issue raised. This unit manager described the initial frustrations in April 2020, “I found the hardest probably was the organisation wanted to come up with a plan, you know and you want it to be air tight before you kind of release it to the staff, so that’s probably what the staff have struggled with the most is the ever changing information, because now we are expecting them to adapt on a you know daily shift basis” (Unit Manager A). By June 2020, the unit manager said, “when I spoke to you last we were in kind of that you know in between phase of “do we release information even though it’s ever changing, all the guidelines” and I did get frustrated with that, that my staff didn’t feel like they knew what was going on, but I feel like we waited enough time. We now haven’t needed to change the guidelines, it’s just been add-ons if needed and staff I think feel really informed and feel like we as a whole service of you know [have] provided them with their options in regards to wearing PPE” (Unit Manager A).
Additionally, rapid workforce decisions needed to be made due to the increasing community transmission in Victoria. There was a higher chance of staff being furloughed or required to self-isolate, which demanded additional forward planning on staff arrangements, with its own set of challenges: “we are revisiting all the surge plans, workforce plans and just trying to figure out how we can limit experiencing positive staff members and then having to do the close contact tracing…” (Unit manager A). Again, the guidance and rules around the workforce did not stay the same over the first 16 months providing another example of a constantly moving context. A strong initial response to workforce planning was described by this leader, “we’ve done a lot of work in the background on workforce planning. We have had a lot of staff who have taken up the offer of increasing hours because their financial situation has changed at home, so for the first time in a very long time we’re not using bank or agency staff because we have our own staff, we’re close to full FT because we’ve got our own staff that have taken up the offer of full-time or close to full-time work. From activity perspective we’ll see a bump, but I don’t know about acuity” (Unit manager B). Demonstrating participants reflection on staffing experiences, in a subsequent interview this same leader stated “lockdown if you want to call 4.0 that we just had now was probably the one actually that hit a lot of people harder than lockdown last year. They didn’t understand … I think it was a lot around messaging that was coming out from the government and they didn’t understand… I think there was a lot more frustration from a staffing perspective this time around as well, because I think you are starting to see, I think everywhere now the cracks and people are getting frustrated with the differences between different states and what we are doing and different health services and what we are doing…”(Unit manager B).
Needing to adapt and alter services
To accommodate public health measures and physical and social distancing, infrastructure changes were implemented in antenatal clinics, outpatient appointments as well as birthing suites. The management of patient flow required new triage tools for assessing COVID-19 infection risk, as well as reducing the number of patients in waiting rooms. Birthing suites were also re-structured to meet the needs of COVID-19 positive patients and staff caring for these women to ensure there was minimal opportunity for transmission. Many of the leaders were making such service adaptations for the first time, and innovative strategies were implemented to accomplish them: “we have also moved to trying not to have women in the waiting room, so they will come and check in at the desk and then be told they can either go back to their car and wait and we text them when we are ready for the appointment and ask them to come back to clinic to be seen” (Midwifery leader A).
All leaders described shifting from face-to-face consultations to online, telehealth or remote care services, or a combination, as a major adaption. The shift to telehealth was welcomed as a necessary change: “we’ve been waiting over a decade for telehealth and I think that that’s been one of the biggest benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic … that’s probably the biggest change … I think it will be very beneficial moving forward” (Unit manager B). This transition was also supported by this leader’s workforce: “the midwives were describing that they felt they could have a quality conversation, because the phone wasn’t ringing, the door wasn’t opening and shutting, there wasn’t noise outside, they were able to totally focus on the needs of that woman and what that woman was asking in the discussion between them … the midwives are saying that they actually feel it’s a better quality discussion than what might have happened in pre-COVID” (Midwifery leader C).
Shifting to telehealth services did raise some concerns in this leaders practice. At the beginning of the transition, this leader reflected on adapting to telehealth by saying, “I think it’s really hard … it’s quite easy for me, because I know my patients very well, and I’ve been doing this for a long time but it’s difficult for our registrar (specialist-in-training). We have a fantastic registrar, but she’s only been in general practice since February, so she doesn’t know her patients and you have to have a certain amount of confidence and experience I think to conduct telehealth safely” (Medical leader B). It was welcomed as an alternative to face-to-face care, yet at the final interview, this leader said, “I know telehealth and telephone consults have a place, but in antenatal care, it is fraught with difficulty. You really do need to eyeball the patient and have that connection with them and do some basic examinations” (Medical leader B). Rapport building, ability to conduct thorough assessments as well as privacy were other concerns leaders had.
A significant challenge for leaders involved changing support people and visitor policies to align with the broader public health response to COVID-19. During peak infection rates, there were no visitors and support people were not allowed to attend appointments. Many staff reported that whilst women were initially upset with these changes, they were ultimately accepting, acknowledging that these policies were there to protect them and their babies. One leader said: “it’s amazing how the community has respected what the hospitals want and almost respecting us as a profession as well … hopefully this continues and they continue to respect us in our profession, but I think when we now say something, “we are doing this for the safety and wellbeing of you and your family” that they’re actually listening to that and respecting that decision” (Medical leader E).
Throughout interviews there were periods of intense lockdowns, high community transmissions and surges in confirmed COVID-19 cases admitted to hospitals. One leader described the experience as “I think … I just feel like we are very well prepared, well we think we are, so we are kind of waiting for the red women [women with COVID-19] to come in, but I think it will see changes in our workforce and our shifts especially” (Unit manager A). Ultimately, few pregnant and postpartum COVID-19 positive women required hospital admissions at this time in the pandemic despite all the preparatory efforts: “we are now at the point where we are pretty much ready, but we have nothing there and so it’s this very unusual almost limbo and I think “limbo” is the right word of, we are all ready but there are a lot of people sitting around not doing very much now, because we were ready for a surge and ready for something more” (Medical leader A).
Over the first 16 months, service adaptations were constant and leaders described having to keep up; policies and protocols seemed to change by the day: “they’ve changed their minds again and they are bringing back surgery and depending on who you are within the organisation, your head is spinning, because every time you turn around something else is changing and so you know, the two big features of the pandemic and what everybody in the world is experiencing, no matter whether or not they are in health care or politics or journalism or at home with kids or whatever it is, is uncertainty and change and the pandemic has brought both in spades and so in the hospital environment where we are getting asked to make changes constantly and then get ready for the change, make the change and then “okay, now we’re changing again”, very challenging” (Medical leader A). One leader reflected on the impact this had on staff, “they are saying what they’re sick of is the rules changing so many times and they say that has been exhausting and that things are trying to change from us, you know, weekly or daily basis” (Midwifery leader C).
Needing to filter and translate information
A key role for leaders was filtering and translating information from government policy updates and communications briefs, and service executives, into lived realities for staff and patients. Leaders were cognisant that information needed to be understandable and practical even through it was often changing. As one leader explained, “it’s been about making sure that the staff have the information they need because they are being inundated and the messaging within [one health service] is very good and we are often ahead of the messaging that comes out from the Department [of Health], so it’s been about filtering that. That takes a bit of time and a bit of getting used to and figuring out the best means of communication because at the end of the day communication is key. … A lot of people have email fatigue at the moment and I think that’s hard when that’s the expectation and how you’re going to get your information out to your staff.” (Unit manager B).
Effective communication was crucial and described by another leader as, “absolutely key to be able to communicate with the sector in a really open and transparent way, I think is really important now [early in the pandemic], but it is going to become a lot more important as things get more difficult” (Midwifery leader B). In the early months, there was the lack of clarity, guidance and clear information for healthcare providers which caused distrust amongst front-line staff and hospital executives. At times, little information was provided to these leaders about the current situation at a state government level which meant that this could not be relayed to staff. One leader said, “I think there was a fair bit of anger I think when things weren’t being communicated well and there was a delay in communication” (Medical leader B). Many leaders explained that they watched the state Premier’s daily press conference to understand what the guidance of the day was going to be and this was a difficult way to be receive information and continually respond.
Additionally, there was no clear and consistent message from a single source, making it difficult for leaders to provide succinct messages to staff. In some cases, leaders reported that their staff felt unhappy, frustrated or disappointed by the lack of information from an executive level. “There are some other things that are not happening that are a major problem and actually I would say that hospital morale is incredibly low at the moment and people are very confused and very frustrated … many, many staff unhappy and they feel like they’re getting mixed messages” (Medical leader A).
Many changes to policy and practice occurred throughout the 16-month study period. Among the most significant changes to service provision were those relating to the procurement, education, and usage of PPE, causing confusion, outrage, and distress among staff. Information regarding correct PPE use was scarce: “we got the communication that ‘you should all be wearing masks’, there weren’t enough masks for everybody [staff] to be wearing them and changing them” (Medical leader B). There was a lack of education and no consistency across institutions. This leader detailed the challenges in not having adequate information to alleviate staff angst: “staff are asking lots of questions that at the moment we don’t have the answers for, which includes like, “should we be wearing scrubs? Where can we get scrubs? What sort of PPE should we be wearing in different circumstances? What is the guideline, what are we doing about this?” (Midwifery leader B). They also explained conflicts regarding appropriate PPE use, “we’re overusing PPE. We are not giving clear messages, we are changing our minds every day and there’s a whole debate and particularly in the maternity services space, they are multi-disciplinary team approach, the views of the multi-disciplinary team in relation to women, particularly in labour … we are not on the same page” (Midwifery leader B).
Sharing new information to staff and patients remained a constant throughout the study period, a process made easier as information updates became more rapid and systematic.
The need to support people
All leaders talked passionately about being committed to supporting their peers, staff and patients throughout the pandemic. One leader said, “I meet together regularly with the nursing leaders so we have those same conversations around how the team is doing, what are we doing to support the team, is there anything else we can be doing, so, there are plenty of opportunities. I find time in my team to reflect and chat with team members and get a feel for where they are up to at the moment as well” (Medical leader D). Leaders acknowledged that they were often the people that their staff members would confide in and share their stressors. Another leader reported that, “[the staff] share things with me that they wouldn’t share with a lot of other people and there’s trust there … I don’t have all of the answers, but sometimes I provide something that gives them a pathway to progress” (Midwifery leader C). Additionally, they also provided a sense of normality for staff, one participant confided that “some days I definitely have to just put the bright shiny [face] on because I think that’s what the team need from me, they also can see that I am very human and some days they can see that that absolutely takes effort … because I think that that’s been forgotten along the way, so I think that’s been a good learning for other people as well” (Unit manager B).
Many of the leaders took it upon themselves to enquire about the mental health and wellbeing of their staff and made efforts to support them during difficult times, such as speaking to staff personally and ensuring leave or breaks from work were planned, “sometimes you are looking after everybody but actually you have to make dedicated time for each person … I ask ‘how are you doing, what is it that you need, what’s going on for you?’ and I make a point about asking what is happening at home” (Medical leader A). Some organisations also provided staff with wellness hubs and check ins, “I think the organisation and the Department [of Health] have done a really good job at providing support and then realising, even with the childcare for the healthcare professionals, providing free childcare … so I think we’re quite lucky and our organisation has set up a wellness hub for staff which is open every day between 9 and 6pm and that’s just a place they can go and you know, they are offering confidential counselling, massages or just a nice quiet place to switch off, trying to give them back some break time” (Medical leader E).
One of the major challenges was maintaining staff morale as Victoria fluctuated in and out of lockdowns: “I think on top of everything else and now with another lockdown I think our biggest challenge is to keep the staff motivated, it’s really difficult” (Medical leader E). At times, social distancing measures meant that staff did not have many opportunities to come together to debrief, “… even the tea room, you were all spaced out and you couldn’t have lunch with your friends, so you couldn’t go to the café together and sit down and have a coffee and even meetings … [it was] very different and impersonal” (Unit Manager A).
Like many other non-urgent procedures and services, professional development for staff, such as clinical training, were indefinitely postponed or conducted online. One leader adapted their services by introducing “online education; so, videos of knot tying and descriptions and some sutures and then we have a shorter session to get together for them to practice, so that we can keep going on because if you … we don’t know how long this, we can’t just keep, we can’t just stop education.” (Midwifery leader A). Leaders recognised the impact stopping education would have on safety and career trajectories and advocated for these education programs to be completed in a COVID-19 safe manner. Efforts were made to develop alternative resources, one participant stated, “[I think we have] got the hang of what education looks like for the frontline workforce now because everything is in online platforms, we do very little face-to-face and if it is face-to-face it’s 15 minute sessions in full PPEs, so I think that we have really sort of refined that process now and it’s just second nature” (Unit manager B). This was also challenged by another leader, stating, “A lot has gone online but if you need to do an assessment you still need to do it face-to-face and one of the things that we have had to push for is doing the neonatal resource assessments face-to-face, yes, it has had to change a bit, it’s such a vital part, you can’t just say “oh just do it online, you can watch it.” So, we have cut down the amount of contact time, been very aware of the cleanliness, which I think is probably a good thing” (Midwifery leader A).
The leaders took it upon themselves to support midwifery and medical students, junior doctors and new medical staff. They recognised that at times over the 16 months students had limited opportunities to learn in a clinical environment hindering their ability to have hands on experience. Leaders wanted to support students, however due to density limits and physical distancing requirements, this was sometimes difficult. “I feel the most sorry for the trainees and the [new] graduates and students … this massive impact on their training and ability to get exposure to births and those sorts of things I really feel for that group” (Medical leader A).
Support for staff also meant advocating for people during times of uncertainty: “when you are in a senior position, you are less likely to be in contact with patients for a long time, … but it is the midwives, nurses, junior doctors who are on the true front line, who are providing that care … who are likely to acquire the infection and they are the ones who do not have a voice and so, I think it is really important that people like me who do have a voice should keep on talking about it … so that then that momentum builds up from lots of different places for things to happen” (Medical leader C). They also advocated for patients, their support people and families during labour and birth as well as on the postnatal ward.
Changes over time
Initial interviews with maternity care leaders in March and April 2020 set the scene for what was happening in maternal healthcare settings across the state. Leaders were at different stages of learning about the virus, some quickly realising that COVID-19 may have a detrimental effect early on (Midwifery Leader A, Midwifery Leader C, Unit Manager A and B, Medical Leader A) and others who had fewer initial concerns about the virus (Medical Leader B-F, Midwifery Leader B). In subsequent interviews, leaders described the different methods in which their health services were adapting to health policies and restrictions placed on the community. At times leaders reported similar interventions and strategies, whilst at other time points strategies differed and were unique to the health service. Almost everything changed over this time period and leaders were in a constant state of reflecting, responding, adapting and unravelling policies and practices.
In the beginning of our study period (March-June 2020), it was clear that many of the changes to maternity care services and health services more broadly, were rushed and haphazardly put together due to ever present uncertainty and later increasing cases in Victoria. Services needed to quickly adapt to increased community transmission, anticipating higher hospital admissions. Maternity services were scaled up and ready to manage influxes of COVID-19 positive women, but in many cases this was not necessary as the number of pregnant women with COVID-19 remained low. However, the impact of the maternity services was significant and every service continually had to adapt and change depending on the broader context on the pandemic. The over-arching theme of ‘being a maternity service leader during the pandemic was challenging’ reflected the longitudinal experiences of these leaders. There was a constant need to reflect and learn as time passed and towards the end of the study period, leaders were able to demonstrate growth in their ability to adapt and manage crisis as they came. Table
2 reflects exemplar quotes from leaders that were able to highlight the changes that occurred over time.
Table 2
Examples of the key changes over time evident in participant responses to the series of interviews across the 16-month study period
Senior executive | Quote 1 (April 2020): “So the biggest stressor for the staff on the floor has been about PPE and it has come because of people’s interconnectedness, so our executive very early on took the position that what DHHS say is the rules … and as you know, this is has been pretty conservative in terms of their PPE guidance, but [some] midwives know someone at [Hospital 1], knows someone at [Hospital 2], knows someone at [Hospital 3], … they are all wearing scrubs for their whole clinic, they are all wearing a surgical mask for all their clinic … so all of the first 2 weeks of April was all about PPE. Quote 2 (September 2020): “I spent all of my holidays on email, managing anxiety primarily about PPE. People wanting to wear masks, wanting to wear scrubs, wanting strict visitation, but at that time that was not the recommendation from DHHS” Quote 3 (June 2021): “What went well was that not needing to individualize your institution and the rules, “these are the rules, from the department” so that was a really good thing … I think what’s different now is that that information from the Department to the hospital to the staff is more rapid and systematic than it used to be, somewhat ad hoc.” | Needing to adapt and alter services - guideline development and changes Needing to filter and translating information – PPE guidelines |
Maternity unit manager | Quote 1 (April 2020): “My head of unit and myself have been very consistent in our messaging to our workforce, both nursing and medical, since late February. So we send out an email three times a week to our staff base where we collate information relevant to our staff base and put it into a single email because obviously people get information from everywhere, its information overload.” Quote 2 (June 2021): “it’s been about making sure that the staff have the information they need because they are being inundated and the messaging within [Hospital] is very good and we are often ahead of the messaging that comes out from the department, so it’s been about filtering that. That takes a bit of time and it took a bit of getting used to as well and figuring out the best means of communication for the team because at the end of the day communication is key, so that’s probably been the hardest thing to figure out what works well and same thing doesn’t work, like if you have got an urgent message that’s different to your weekly wrap up emails or whatever happens to be and I think there is email fatigue, I think a lot of people have email fatigue at the moment and I think that’s hard when that’s the expectation and how you going to get your information out to your staff.” | Needing to filter and translating information – communication channels, what works best |
OBGYN | Quote 1 (March 2020): “We are still waiting on workflows and clinical practice guidelines for staff and it’s increasing staff anxiety, so much like we’ve seen at a national level, politically, people actually want information and want transparency and I think that that would actually help a great deal in terms of staff anxiety and preparedness”. Quote 2 (June 2021): “Initially we did a lot of simulation specifically to design the protocols and guidelines and everything for COVID and then donning and doffing and PPE and then as things progressed we didn’t really need to do that quite as much because people were familiar with that and then as we were coming out of lockdown, we started fit testing, so also people were getting a bit more education about PPE but also I think there was a lot more awareness of the new guidelines that had moved to actually recognition of COVID is airborne” | Needing to filter and translating information – guideline development and dissemination The need to support people – facilitating education |