To celebrate the International Nurses Day, Fawn Bess-Leith interviews Laura O’Hanlon, Operational Lead for Newham’s Perinatal Mental Health Team based at Newham Hospital

Laura, by way of introduction, please give a brief synopsis of your role?

Perinatal Mental Health (PMH), is focused on looking after women who have serious mental illness, giving preconception advice through to assessing, managing and treating women up to one year post-natal. My team works with mothers offering prophylactic interventions through to risk management, facilitating hospital admission and providing families with the tools to cope with everyday life. Supporting the relationship between a mother and her baby is crucial to a baby’s early development and I am passionate about this work.

As team lead, my role now is to support the multi disciplinary team function, supervise the staff and their work, ensuring the smooth running of the service. As PMH is part of the government’s long term plan (LTP), I am also working towards ensuring we meet the targets of the LTP, developing the role of the service in line with this and recruiting and developing new staff into this crucial area of mental health work.

What led you into a nursing career?

It was suggested to me. After a few years in my teenage life travelling and living on a kibbutz in Israel, I returned home to London and was doing casual shop work. I always knew I wanted to care for people but wasn’t sure of the direction I wanted to take. Nursing was suggested to me by a colleague, I thought about it and looked into it, it seemed right. I applied and was successful and started my career originally in general nursing in June 1984.

I developed a passion for mental health when I completed my mental health placement. After qualifying and spending a year working on a surgical ward in Medway, I applied to do my Post Registered Mental Nursing (RMN). My Mental health career started in 1988, when I began my training at Princess Alexandra College of Nursing based at St Clements psychiatric hospital. Here I found my passion in nursing and loved training.

What changes have you seen over the years?

Over the years in perinatal, I have seen services grow nationwide, meaning all women get specialised perinatal treatment and have better opportunities to stay well and to be with their baby either on mother and baby units or in the community.

What do your love about your job, what about your job makes your ‘heart sing’?

Seeing a mother get through her illness and hold onto that precious relationship with her baby is the very thing that makes my work so special and what I love about my job.

What’s your greatest achievement as a MH Nurse?

Being part of the perinatal service starting from being myself alone to the service it is today, a truly multi-disciplinary service with 13 staff and growing, leading this process has been the greatest achievement of my career.

What’s your experience working through the COVID-19 pandemic? Challenges and how you’ve responded?

We had to adapt quickly. We had to move to remote working and offer online clinics, which we did successfully. We moved to being a service where staff worked at home as well as in the office. We had to find ways of supporting women from a diverse and deprived borough to be at home with their children and still access the resources they needed, like foodbanks.

We developed resource play packs to entertain older children in the home. We networked with the third sector and local authority to source resources for families. We are now also moving towards keeping some remote working as feedback from mothers has told us that this worked for them, being at home with a baby sometimes means seeing your clinician is easier remotely.

What’s your greatest hope or wish for Nurses’ day?

My hope for Nurses day is that we inspire new fresh talent and passion into our profession. We need caring new young creative people to join us.

What would you say to inspire a new young nurse reading your story?

It is a privilege to hear people’s life stories and mental health nursing gives you that. Enjoy the privilege and respect it, you have a wonderful career ahead of you.

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