Community PROMPT Wales

Community PROMPT Wales’ is a Welsh Risk Pool Maternity Safety and Learning programme developed by PROMPT Wales National Team Wales to address the needs of community midwifery teams. Building on the successful roll out of PROMPT Wales, training is presented in a way that represents practice in midwife-led settings.

The programme was developed over the summer of 2019 and piloted throughout 2020 in all Health Boards. Following a successful evaluation, Community PROMPT Wales was full implemented in September 2021. All Community Midwives in Wales now attend training annually.

Scenarios take place in the birth centres or a simulated home birth setting and focus on managing emergencies in a small team without early access to obstetric support. Midwives, Health Care Support Workers, Maternity Support Workers and Paramedics train together, using their own equipment, providing fidelity to their usual working practice. Training in the context of community practice facilitates the testing of systems and processes and identifies areas for organisational improvement.

PROMPT training resources and algorithms have been adapted for community services and these are now embedded in all Wales guidelines and clinical practice, supporting midwives to recognise and respond efficiently to emergency situations to optimise safety.

Community PROMPT Wales training is facilitated by Midwives and Paramedics who have received an approved PROMPT Wales faculty development training programme. Local faculty teams are responsible for the organisation and delivery of their courses. The National Team provide regular support and undertake annual quality assurance to ensure high standards of training and authenticity to the programme are maintained.

The PROMPT Wales Trainer’s Booklet has been updated in 2025 and contains a suite of training resources for local facilitation teams.

The PROMPT Wales Trainer’s Booklet has been updated in 2025 and contains a suite of training resources for local facilitation teams.

In 2023, the national team were delighted to win the ‘Excellence in Midwifery for Education & Learning’ award at the RCM Awards in recognition of Community PROMPT Wales.

Listen to Sarah and Sarah talking about Community PROMPT Wales at the Maternity & Midwifery Forum Community PROMPT Wales - YouTube

The PROMPT Wales team have collaborated with the PROMPT Maternity Foundation to adapt the programme for the UK and Community PROMPT is now a stand-alone training package and is included in the second Annual Update 2022/23. Community PROMPT | PROMPT Maternity Foundation

For more information about Community PROMPT, please contact the PROMPT Maternity Foundation at enquiries@promptmaternity.org.uk

FAQs

What does a PROMPT Wales training day consist of?

PROMPT Wales is a full day training course, attended and facilitated by a multiprofessional maternity team. The emphasis is on team working, communication and the impact of human factors, as well as clinical management. Delegates are allocated to multiprofessional teams to take part in simulated obstetric emergencies in their own clinical setting. Some examples would be attending an undiagnosed breech birth in a midwife-led unit or managing a cardiac arrest. Community midwifery teams attend Community PROMPT Wales training where they train alongside paramedics and practise managing childbirth emergencies in a community setting.

What is the overall objective of the PROMPT Wales programme?

PROMPT Wales is ‘more than just training,’ it is about what happens every day in clinical practice. Training brings the team together, helping to build respectful working relationships where every member of the team feels valued and safe to voice an opinion. PROMPT Wales training has encouraged the embedding of algorithms and proformas in to every day practice in NHS Wales, making ‘the right way the easy way.’ And of course, the overall objective of PROMPT Wales training is about enhancing the clinical management of an obstetric emergency though improvements in teamworking, communication and the use of tools and algorithms, leading to safer maternity care and outcomes.

How will we know that PROMPT Wales training is effective?

As demonstrated in Southmead Hospital in Bristol and other maternity units in the UK and abroad, we expect to see improvements in outcomes here in Wales.

We have demonstrated improvements in staff perception of team working and safety, measured using a validated Safety Attitude Questionnaire. Results from pre and post implementation of PROMPT Wales shows improvement in all six domains: teamwork, safety climate, perception of management, job satisfaction, working conditions and stress recognition.

PROMPT Wales has also been effective at bringing teams together to train and reducing variation in the provision and quality of training. In 2017, there was little in the way of multiprofessional training in NHS Wales maternity services, with the different professions receiving varied training, and this differed between the obstetric units in Wales. Our process measures demonstrate that PROMPT Wales training is standardised across Wales; facilitated by midwives, obstetricians, and anaesthetists; and attended by the whole multiprofessional team. Overall attendance for 2022-23 was 90% of all maternity staff in NHS Wales.

PROMPT is associated with a reduction in low 5-minute Apgar scores and HIE (Draycott et al, 2005). NHS Wales has seen a reduction in term and preterm APGAR score of less than 7 at 5 minutes since the implementation of PROMPT Wales.

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