I am passionate about continually challenging poor standards of maternity training and care, and ensuring lessons are learned to make maternity wards as safe as they possibly can be for mothers and babies.
Get to Know Theresa
Theresa has been a registered midwife since 2009 and has worked in NHS hospitals and in the community. In her role at Hudgell Solicitors, she uses her extensive knowledge to assist our legal teams, producing advisory reports for potential medical negligence claims.
With her extensive clinical and maternity knowledge, Theresa supports colleagues with birth injury, still birth and wrongful birth related claims as well as cerebral palsy and other cases of child medical negligence.
In recent times Theresa has worked as Lead Clinical Governance and Risk Manager within the NHS and on secondment to the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, which conducts independent investigations of serious incidents, making recommendations aimed at improving healthcare systems and processes in order to reduce risk and improve standards.
Theresa has also undertaken life and death reviews on behalf of the NHS to identify gaps in care for people with learning disabilities.
Career Highlights
I was pleased to work with The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (formerly HSIB now the MNSI) at the start of this Organisation in 2019, completing the extensive investigator training programme.
The experience and training have enabled me to review all type of incident reports systematically in my work for Hudgells, identifying areas that aren’t explored in investigations or where I believe the report is not answering the families concerns or addressing the causes of any harm that has occurred.
I have since been made aware through my work that the NHS has now addressed the lack of staff training and poor-quality reports into incidents highlighted by HSIB/MNSI including maternity investigations, with a new investigation system called Patient Safety Incident Response Framework.
It remains to be seen if this new approach to investigations will better support families. I will continue to work with the Hudgells team to monitor the new system reports as well as any other investigations to ensure families are being properly represented when things go wrong.
Giving More
When I joined Hudgell Solicitors I was pleased to see the firm works closely with the national mother and baby charity Baby Lifeline, as I have delivered their training courses on Childbirth Emergencies in the community to paramedics.
