If you are a midwife...

[Tableclothing]

... What would be the best way for a mum to say thank you for care that went above and beyond?

Is it different between community and hospital midwives?

If a thank you letter could help you progressively (eg evidence for appraisals), is there any particular areas it would be good to mention?

TIA

Progressively = professionally

Letters/cards are great, needed for revalidation (professional registration), doesn't matter too much what they are about, but being specific about what was so special is always lovely.

Hello. I’m a hospital based midwife.

A thank you letter is really the best thing - I have a scrap book and I’ve kept every thank you card I’ve ever received. We can also use testimonies from patients when we revalidate every three years. What’s really lovely is when the card says something specific - beyond “thank you for delivering baby dave” but ‘thank you for your care/compassion - I really appreciated it when you did xyz”.

Other than that, a big bag of clicky black pens is always a nice present, as they always seem to get stolen by doctors go missing

Thank you x

I live quite far from the hospital and could only remember first names for the midwives who looked after me, and didn’t get my act together to send thanks until after my notes had been taken away postnatally, so I sent an email to the head of midwifery at the hospital with specific thank yous for each of the midwives by first name and she said she would be able to identify who the midwives were and pass my thanks on. I wish I had done something handwritten, but hopefully an email sufficed for them

I work in both the hospital and community, and agree that a lovely card is by far the nicest!