Working within the ‘Born and Bred in Doncaster’ (BaBi-D) research department is Kerry Dooley, Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospital’s (DBTH) first ever Research Midwife. She has worked across all areas of the maternity department between the Trust’s Doncaster and Bassetlaw sites in her time at DBTH. The University of York graduate, who is also the Clinical Lead for the study, is passionate about increasing the research portfolio across the Children and Families directorate within the hospitals.
Kerry said: “Ultimately by doing this role I would like to help improve the care women and their families receive locally and nationally through research.”
Kerry‘s first year in post has been very productive, and alongside leading Babi-D, she is supporting other studies, including Giant PANDA, a trial comparing and monitoring hypertension medication in pregnancy, and GBS3, a study exploring Group B strep tests in pregnancy.
Kerry said about these research studies: “It is vital to have speciality nurses and midwives who raise the profile of research and increase research activity and engagement. Evidence shows that hospitals active in clinical research have better patient care outcomes not only for patients involved in trials but also by driving improvement across our services.”
For Kerry, one of the main draws to the role as a Research Midwife was the opportunity to get involved with Babi-D, a public health, birth cohort study. This is one branch of a larger national cohort study co-ordinated by Born in Bradford, an internationally-recognised research programme, that has so far tracked the health and well-being of over 45,000 children and their parents in Bradford.
The BaBi-D programme focuses primarily on the data linkage of routine data between pregnant women and their babies in Doncaster across health, social care and educational organisations. The aim is to enable health researchers to use and analyse this data to better understand the health of our local population with long-term benefits such as improved and tailored health services and a reduction in health inequalities. Kerry said: “We launched BaBi-D in June 2022 and are in the process of rolling the study out across Doncaster and will be offered to all pregnant women attending their booking appointments. The BaBi-D team, including midwives from Doncaster Royal Infirmary and particularly the Community Midwifery Team, have got the study off to a phenomenal start, hitting our first year recruitment target in just five months. Thanks to the fantastic support we have had from the women and families that have consented to the study, we now have over 850 women and babies taking part by agreeing to share their routine data.”
To find out more about this ambitious programme, head over to the BaBi-D webpage.
BaBi-D is part of the BaBi network; a group of local birth cohort studies that work together to link routine data with the aim to improve the health and well-being of
families through research. The BaBi network is part of the Born in Bradford family and is supported by the National Institute for Health Research Yorkshire and Humber ARC (NIHR YHARC). To find out more please visit: www.babinetwork.co.uk
The BaBi network is only possible thanks to the generosity of women and babies who joined the BaBi family and the enthusiasm and dedication of the midwives who invited
them. We are grateful to all the women, babies, health professionals and researchers who make BaBi happen.