A GWENT midwife's work on a new training programme using similar technology to that in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire helped earn a UK award.

Grace Thomas, consultant midwife with Aneurin Bevan Health Board, picked up a Royal College of Midwives Excellence in Midwifery Education award with colleagues form the University of Glamorgan for their MaM (Medicines and Midwives) project.

MaM aims to teach midwives how to give medicines safely and effectively, allowing them during training to experience real life situations on a large screen, voting for which treatments they would administer.

The package helps students communicate as a group, and allows them to discuss ideas.

Mrs Thomas worked with Dr Simon Young and Debbie Lucey from the university, to create a training workshop using technology which includes individual ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ type handsets for multiple choice questions.

Clinical simulation scenarios were devised to reflect common medicine administration situations with pregnant or postnatal women. These were filmed and edited with questions throughout the scenario which the students answer via their handsets.

Answers are immediately available on the screen in graph format and discussion then takes place in ‘real time’ during the scenario.

“Research has suggested that we learn and develop best when we work in collaboration with more capable peers, and this depends on full social interaction," said Mrs Thomas.

“By getting students to experience scenarios that have been identified in local practice as problematic, we are able to contribute to educating student midwifes who are knowledgable, safe, confident and competent.”