Ms Linda Napolitano

Linda graduated from Oxford Brookes University in 2002 with a BSC Honours in Midwifery. Linda worked as a full-time midwife for 6 years prior to becoming the Women’s risk Coordinator at a large teaching hospital. Linda continued this role for 6 years before moving from maternity and women’s health into Trust governance where she worked as Senior Risk Advisor for two years specialising in Serious Incident Investigations under the NHS England Serious Incident Framework. In 2017 Linda returned to maternity care becoming the Women’s Governance Lead for a large London Trust. In 2019 she also took on the role of Deputy Head of Midwifery. Following maternity leave Linda returned to work in 2020, reducing her hours and portfolio to maternity services only. She has continued to lead governance activities for the maternity service in 8b role since then. Throughout Linda’s professional work she has amassed significant experience of both high and low risk maternity settings and has worked in all maternity inpatient areas. Linda continues to work closely with clinical teams and regularly undertakes managerial on call duties which involve clinical work in a variety of inpatient, high risk and intrapartum settings.

Linda’s area of focus are complex pregnancy, triage and assessment in maternity settings, intrapartum care, fetal monitoring, high dependency maternity care, midwifery care in operative environments and care of the complex and deteriorating patient. As Lead for Governance Linda has a wide-ranging knowledge of current and past guidelines and practices with NHS maternity settings. Linda has investigated and been involved with numerous Serious Incidents, Never Events, mortality reviews (including the Perinatal Mortality Review Tool and MBBRACE), complaints and external investigations.

Linda leads on the midwifery aspects of claims for her current trust and has many years of experience with claims and inquests relating to maternity care.

Linda has always strived to keep up to date with current practices and research within her professional life and maintains a keen interest in all aspects of the changing research environment relating to women's health and newborn care.

Linda has been involved in maternity services management for 9 years. Linda has overseen all governance activities during her 9 years as Clinical Governance Lead including the Saving Babies Lives care bundle, PMRT, Maternity Incident Scheme, ATAIN (Avoiding Term Admissions in Neonatal Units) and she has worked closely with the Maternity and Neonatal Safety Investigations Branch. Linda is experienced at working with MNSI reports and the Early Notification Scheme hosted by NHS Resolutions.

Linda regularly teaches on the maternity mandatory training schedule of her current trust. This includes a wide variety of clinical subjects including bladder care, post partum haemorrhage and management of sick newborn. She also contributes to teaching across the women's directorate with session on incidents, risk and consent and capacity. Linda has been an invited speaker at the Royal Society of Medicine to give a talk on Consent and Capacity in maternity care.