I’d heard from other midwives that when they worked MGP they felt like they were always on the job, couldn’t relax and quickly burnt out from being on-call 24/7. Yet, research shows that continuity of care is better for the woman. So, when the opportunity arose for me to try out MGP, I was nervous as to how I’d cope with being on-call 24/7 – but I was also excited to embrace a new experience!
The small regional hospital where I was under contract had approximately 200 births per year and the set-up is “team MGP”. Unlike other MGP workloads where each midwife would be allocated women and you were responsible for each of them, at this particular hospital, we collectively shared the entire workload (both the women and being on-call).
A week’s MGP roster
Under this system, here’s an example of what a typical week’s roster would look like:
Monday – first on-call for labour & birth.
Tuesday – second on-call and responsible for postnatal care.
Wednesday – third on-call and responsible for antenatal visit.
Thursday – fourth on-call and in to the hospital to perform checks and restocking.
Friday – back to first on-call and then 2 days off.
Quite confusing….at first
When the above roster was initially explained to me, it sounded quite confusing….but once I started working, it all made sense! I appreciated that I wasn’t first on-call the whole time (in regular MGP you’re the first phone call for all of your allocated women). Some days I would be called in and work 12 hours straight, whilst other days I was in for an hour or two and that was it. I could see that for a busier hospital this set-up might not be ideal, but in this instance, it worked well as the midwifery team was small and the women often saw the same midwives and therefore maintained some continuity of care.
Work/Life balance
I found the work/life balance better than having five rostered shifts a week and it made sense to only be at the hospital if there were women to care for. I really enjoyed the work and am glad I had this little taste of “MGP-lite”. Now that I’ve had an introduction to it, I would definitely consider an MGP contract again in the future.
And that’s one more reason to enjoy agency work – you get to dip your toe into work situations that you may never have previously tried (and wouldn’t necessarily have the opportunity to do without signing up for a permanent position).
Be brave and give it a try. You never know, you just might love it!
(Image credit: Wide Open Road Photography)