Bethany Pengelly

Qualifications

BSc (Hons) Midwifery

Specialisms

Registered Midwife with experience in community and hospital midwifery care.

Introduction

I qualified as a Midwife in 2006 and have worked in both hospital and community settings, caring for women and babies in the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal periods. Working in all areas of midwifery and caring for both low risk and high risk pregnancies at each stage, has meant I have developed extensive knowledge and skills in these areas of care. 

I currently work as a Senior Clinical Matron for Maternity Outpatients and hold overall responsibility for the services of community midwives, the home birth team, a midwife-led birth unit, foetal and maternal assessment unit, triage department, the sonography and consultant antenatal clinic department. I am part of a team responsible for the day-to-day running of the service ensuring safety and helping when incidences arise and practice issues. I undertake internal investigations that arise and I support staff through HSIB investigations. I review policies, guidelines and implement changes in response to NICE guidelines and standards, to ensure our staff are adhering to best practice and research. 

I work clinically within these areas from running an antenatal clinic in the community, working on the maternal and foetal medicine department providing care for women on a high-risk pathway to triage where I answer phone calls to women, advising them and then assessing them on the triage department. I also work in the stand-alone midwife-led unit and the alongside birth unit caring for low-risk women in labour. I work on labour ward caring for high risk women in labour, attending obstetric and neonatal emergencies and attending caesarean sections. I attend home births as part of an on-call rota. I therefore have vast experience and knowledge in these areas and understand what is required to provide a safe service for women and their babies. I am on the acuity escalation rota, which requires an on-call element to respond to staffing needs. This keeps up my clinical practice in all areas of midwifery keeping my clinical skills and knowledge up to date.

From 2017 to 2023, I worked as a manager of a midwife led unit and the community team, which enabled me to use my clinical skills and knowledge to ensure a safe and effective practice. This role included over viewing the care the midwives in my team were delivering and investigating when incidences occurred. During this time I continued to work clinically, in all areas, to maintain my clinical skills and knowledge. 

I worked for many years in a midwife led-unit. This involved making decisions in care to identify and refer/transfer to the main obstetric unit when deviations from the norm were identified. This means I appreciate and can identify where opportunities to intervene have been missed and the implications of this. I am a qualified NIPE practitioner and am competent in performing these. 

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.