Hannah Elizabeth

I've been quietly applying for a couple of jobs this year and sadly, neither of them have quite worked out, but I still wanted to talk about them here and share a little more about why I was interested in them.  I actually applied for both of these before my flexible working request got approved and I was really struggling and ultimately stressing about my work-life balance and the time taken to get to and from work. Both of the jobs gave me the flexibility I was desiring, with the option to self-roster as part of a small team, which I thought would be ideal.  One was to be a Homebirth Midwife. I absolutely loved my job as a Community Midwife during my Preceptorship, however I always felt very stretched and taken advantage of as a Newly Qualified Midwife. When this job came up, I was really struggling in the hospital, because every shift I would be moved and my passion is and always will be labour care, but there was sometimes up to a month where that didn't happen. I was ex...

I've made a number of posts over the years of work-life balance and here's another little update on my new contract. Working in the NHS isn't always easy and at times it can be really quite difficult. It's important to try and make shift patterns and the working schedule work around your life as much as possible. Whilst I would absolutely love to have self-rostering be apart of my Trust, it's currently only for smaller teams and not for midwifery staff members at present. That being said, there are still ways that you can utilise to get a better shift pattern for you as an individual.  I have recently - finally - increased my contract hours at work. I have two separate contracts, one for my Labour Suite Midwife role as a Band 6 and the other as my Sessional Professional Midwifery Advocate role as a Band 7. I do 7.5 hours a month (just under 2 hours a week) as the latter, and that is the contract, however for the former, I dropped my hours from 37.5 hours a week to 2...

In November, I became sexually active again and within that time I got two UTIs. I've spoken about my UTI symptoms previously but because of that, it defintely put the seed of doubt in my head and I wanted to ensure that I wasn't or didn't have an sexually transmitted infection. I know it's rare so unlikely to be related, even the A+E doctor said as much, but it was still something tugging at the back of my mind.  I asked my first partner to do an STI test before we got together, as he was my first sexual partner but he had been with 2 other women. I was really hurt when he said no and refused to do one but I guess I trusted him and so went on with life. After we broke up, I did an STI check and it came back negative. I then had a second STI check in A+E when I got admitted with pneumonia, so this would be the third, but my first at home test.  I ordered a kit through the NHS website. You can only order if you have no symptoms, which when I ordered it, I didn't hav...

Growing up, I always wanted to be a doctor. I never questioned how that title would come to be. I wanted to be a doctor of medicine and become either an obstetrician or a neonatologist. I went to university at the University College London to study Medicine for 3 years in September 2014 and then unfortunately failed my examinations, so had to leave and there ended my dream of becoming a doctor...or so I thought.  Fast forward a few months, I decided to go into Midwifery so I then started Midwifery at the University of Nottingham in January 2018. I ended up finding the curriculum at the university very easy and not very challenging, yet still enjoyable. Due to this, I ended up doing a lot of extracurricular activities and taking on a lot of extra roles and responsibilities.  One of these was partaking in a research group alongside my undergraduate degree, and I absolutely loved it. I loved the extra skills I gained, the increased knowledge and the experience of doing primary r...

Last month, I had my Master's Graduation! I started my Master's in September 2022 and finished in July 2024. It's been 2 years of working part-time alongside my full-time job, but even then I sometimes have ended up doing far more hours, depending on the workload, which had obviously been a little tricky at times.  I headed to Chelmsford for my graduation which was a unique experience. I was originally doing distance, online learning but had planned to attend for one of my modules and to go in once a term for the others. That never happened so I had never been to the campus before and the city neither. It was a long drive down but we made it with good timing, then drove to two different car parks looking for space and met my dad there; my mum had come in the car with me.  We had a lovely meal at Cote, then headed to the tents to collect graduation gowns and to take the official pictures, before heading to the cathedral for pictures in the grounds outside and then the ceremo...

I soon go to my Master's graduation and I am really excited! I can't quite believe how expensive it is, and of course I've had to pay for it all myself. The tickets for guests are £25 each and the gown hire which is of course mandatory is £42. On top of that, there's also travel costs and photographs to buy when there. It's going to be a pricey trip.  My first graduation experience was a little bit of a weird one because it was so delayed with Covid-19 restrictions and cancellations. We had a lovely mini cohort-member hosted event at her house to celebrate about 9 months after we qualified, and then our graduation itself wasn't until a year and a half later. By the time I graduated, I'd already been working for what felt like years. It was also the hottest, sweatiest day ever, with the temperature going well above 30C so I am very much excited to have an almost winter graduation, and not overheat in all the gowns and layers. Fingers crossed for no rain and j...

I've officially got my final transcript through and I will be graduating from my  Advanced Midwifery Practice Masters at Anglia Ruskin University . I've completed the degree part-time over 2 years, as a distance learner, whilst working almost full-time for the duration. I did a summary after the first year , but I also wanted to share my thoughts after the second year.  I've absolutely loved being a distance learner again . I think working from home is defintely my preference and if I had a career that would allow me to work from home full time, that would be ideal. Of course, with my chosen profession, that's not really possible but maybe towards the end, nearing retirement! I love being able to flexibly work, in my own space, around my own time and scheduled plans. I love being able to do activities midday and then work later into the evenings when I feel the most awake. I also love being able to take my break and eat when needed, rather than relying on someone else t...

With my Master's university journey almost coming to an end, I thought I would link all my posts in one place for reference! I've had 5 modules, one of which was worth double the credits, and for each module, I've tried to share my thoughts before and after the module. Then also share my experience of the assessment and the result.  Of course, I also shared my thoughts of  getting accepted  into the course,  funding  and of  starting university  as a postgraduate student.  Promoting Normal Childbirth is worth 30 credits and I got 58%. Pre-Thoughts  After Thoughts  Assessment  Result Facilitating Complex Childbirth  is worth 30 credits and I got 66%. Pre-Thoughts   After Thoughts  Assessment  Result Professional Midwifery Advocate is worth 30 credits and I got 55% and a "pass"  Pre-Thoughts   After Thoughts  Assessment: Part 1 Essay and Part 2 Booklet Result: Part 1 Essay and Part 2 Booklet Befo...

I shared last week my final assessment mark for my Master's degree, which was documented as 71% but I got such detailed feedback, I thought I would share exactly where I lost marks. I was genuinely really happy when I saw my score, but with being in hospital and having pneumonia, it took me a couple of weeks before I looked through the feedback and with that I ended up questioning my grade.  The project was marked by two separate markers but it looked like the first marker gave me a much higher mark, so it was a little disappointing that there was such a large difference, but the biggest error was that the marks given correlate to my total score. I'm sure it was just an admin error, however when I added up the individual section scores for them all, Chapter 3 totalled 20 and not 17, therefore I actually got 74%.  With that being a very clear mistake, I then questioned a couple of the other sections as the marks had boundaries and the actual mark given wasn't documented. In...

In the middle of the scariest week of my life, whilst in the hospital I also got my final Master's module results back for the Major Project. Of course, I couldn't really celebrate at the time because I was in the hospital, but nevertheless I am so pleased with my grade and happy it's the final result I needed. I got the highest grade for the duration of the degree...71%! I really felt like I put my heart and soul into this submission and I felt like I hit the mark scheme and wrote a really good piece of research so I am happy that the mark reflects that. Of course, I am a little disappointed that I didn't get the extra 3 marks that I needed to get my Distinction overall (yet to be confirmed) but nevertheless, the feedback was thorough.  Overall, the markers commented that it was a very interesting project and that it was completely thoroughly. They hoped that the findings will be taken back to the practice setting to help improve preceptorship programmes at my trust.

My final Master's assessment, the big dissertation has finally been completed and submitted! I cannot believe it's finally finished and I don't think reality has quite hit yet. I've shared quite a few posts regarding the last big Major Project module, with my thoughts before , of the teaching and starting writing . I also shared some thoughts throughout the experience in a dissertation diary ( Part 1 ,  Part 2  and  Part 3 ) format from the end of May to the end of July and it's taken a lot of time and effort to complete.  It took me a long time to get started writing and of course, once I started I very much regretted not starting. I used some of the information I had already used in my Research Methodology  as I specifically picked the same topic. This meant for Chapter 2 I could just rewrite the section to begin, before adding a lot more information. Chapter 1 ended up being fairly easy and enjoyable to write as I was able to adapt small sections from Chapter...

The final part of my dissertation diary is here. It's spread over the entire month this time, but I haven't actually had much time to do the dissertation so it's been difficult and I've just had to fit it in around plans, doing it as an when I can.  Wednesday 3rd July  I'm finally feeling better. I've ended up being in bed for the majority of the last few days and sadly also had to take time off work. I did feel better yesterday, but once I made a start of the other sections of Chapter 5 and organising the information I already had, my headache came back and I had to turn the screen back on. I cannot wait to be able to not have to look at a screen for a few weeks.  I also ended up emailing the module lead. I was enquiring whether it was possible to have a further example of a qualitative project as there was only one example of Chapter 4, whereas there was 6 quantitative examples which didn't seem quite as fair. He offered to read the section so I ended up s...

2 weeks further down the track and here's some updates on the dissertation, following on from part 1 !  Monday 18th June  My birthday weekend was a lovely long break and a great distraction. I ended up having a super long, unusual lie in so I didn't wake up until 1pm and by the time I finished the last half of the film, packed, loaded the car and drove back to Nottingham in the horrible traffic, I didn't get home until gone 6pm and I was exhausted. Instead of doing dissertation work, I spent a few hours cleaning, tidying, unpacking and doing life admin to catch up on some bits. Tomorrow I am going to have to be back at it, because I have four long shifts this week so not much time! As much as I would love to write Chapter 4, due to the sporadic spare time, this week's goal is to finish the second draft of Chapter 3 and then try to cut it down further to loose some of the 5000 words over I need to get rid of. I will then send this to my supervisor for feedback on certain...

The past 4 financial years, I have been working as a Qualified Midwife. I always find it interesting to know how much people make, earn, spend on things and general cost. I don't understand why people are so secretive about finances and I think it should be a social norm to be more open and honest. I thought it would be interesting to compare my earnings since working as a midwife over the years.  So I qualified as a midwife in January 2021. I started the first week of work as a Band 3 Pre-Pin Midwife whilst waiting for my Pin number to come through and then worked as a Band 5 until the end of the financial year, working full time hours of 37.5 hours. For that period I earnt, £5897.58 .  The next year, I was again working full-time at 37.5 hours a week, with the majority paid as a Band 5. I got my Band 6 towards the end of February so just less than 2 months were Band 6 pay. For that year, I earnt £34,841.65 . At that point, Band 5 basic pay was  £25,655 and Band 6 basic...

Shortly after starting my Master's Postgraduate degree in September 2022, I decided to drop my hours down to technically part-time hours. Full-time hours in the NHS is 37.5 hours a week. Long shifts are 12.5 hours, with a 1 hour unpaid break, therefore this works out as 3 shifts a week for 3 weeks a month, and 1 shift a week for 1 week a month. I decided to drop my hours to 29 hours, because this was the lowest contracted hours that still allowed 4 shift requests a month. Shift requests mean you can book days off, which are very much needed for social life. This means - or should mean - I alternate between 2 and 3 shifts a week.  The main reason I did this was to give me more flexibility. Since Covid-19, our NHSP bank rates have been great. For weekdays the hourly wage is £32, nights and Saturdays £38 and Sundays or bank holidays £40. I decided I would pick up on average two shifts a month to then bring my hours back to almost full time hours, if not more on occasion, whilst also...

As I mentioned last week, I thought I would do something a little different for this assessment, because it is such a large project and I thought it would be interesting to share my experiences and progression. Here's part 1! Tuesday 28th May I am just settling down for the night. I have been somewhat productive today. I thought I’d get more done, but sadly not. I did do some meal prepping which was good so I have an extra 6 meals in the freezer for work and I have one ready for tomorrow so no cooking…yey! I also managed to do most of my admin before finally starting on the essay that I’ve been putting off for what feels like years. Anyway, I have just saved everything and shut it all down and got ready for bed. I’m suddenly really cold. It always feels so lonely in bed and wish I could share it with someone but never mind.  Wednesday 29th May  Finally made a little start on writing. Even if it was the smallest part. Nevertheless, it’s a start! Mainly, I printed off all my art...