BU Research Blog

Friday 6th October St Mary’s Maternity Unit, part of Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, held a Whose Shoes? event in Poole.  Whose Shoes?® is a facilitation tool to help empower both staff and service users of services.  Friday’s event was led by Gill Phillips, the person behind the original idea of Whose Shoes?®.  Gill’s approach involves promoting understanding and empathy by looking at issues from a wide range of perspectives from a range of possible stakeholders.

The event Poole was initiated by NHS midwife Jillian Ireland, who is also BU Visiting Faculty in our Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).  She was assisted by Dr. Jen Leamon, who helped facilitate NHS maternity staff, pregnant women and new mothers, in their discussions.   Jen is Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at BU and she facilitated the discussion with the aid of the Whose Shoes? board game.  In the afternoon Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (also based in CMMPH) led a discussion of reflection and reflective practice with midwives and maternity support workers (MSWs).  CMMPH’s involvement in the event is part of our wider collaboration with the NHS locally in the field of midwifery education.

The Whose Shoes? board  game is also by CMMPH in a very different context as PhD student Alice Ladur has translated the game to test it in Uganda.  Alice first did a pilot study with African men living in London before embarking on a project to improve men’s involvement in maternity care in rural Uganda.