Maternity Placements – Thinking Outside The Norm
Ok, you have got your diploma, congratulations. But what next?
Starting to work as a maternity nurse practitioner can be pretty daunting. You have a number of options available to you including doing the standard 24/5 or 24/6 maternity positions.
BUT.. Have you considered your other options?
Setting up a prenatal or antenatal workshop:
Or set of workshops in your area. You can contact local GP surgeries and ask if there are any other maternity workshops in your area. You will be surprised how little there is out there. Some surgeries might even have a room for you to rent. Have a look at https://www.nct.org.uk/ or http://bumpandbabyclub.com for inspiration and pricing. Remember, you are not a large organisation so you can compete on price and provide a more personal approach.
Breastfeeding coffee morning:
Not sure if coffee and breastfeeding goes together. But you get the picture. One hour of breastfeeding session, charging £10 per visit ( obviously you can charge more, but if you are just starting and trying to test the water, £ 10 is just fine) including coffee ( you can generally arrange with the owner the set up). You could aim for 5-8 mums, this makes a nice, easy to manage group. If you work out your income from this you will see it’s not bad for an hours’ worth of work and of course getting your name out there.
Remember to take your business cards as mum’s like to talk/network so you want to encourage them to pass your details onto other mums.
One off visits:
This is becoming very popular, as there is so little support for new mums.
What you can charge really depends on your level of experience and qualification, but very experienced qualified maternity nurse practitioner would be expecting around £150 per 2-hour visit. This would be for maternity nurse practitioners of at least 10 years’ experience.
For a less experienced maternity nurse practitioners you could start at £60 per 2 hour visit.
Antenatal Support Packages:
You could aim to book blocks of visits, let’s say 10 visits in the first 6 weeks, you could offer a discount at £65 or £60 per block. It is important that you ensure that your client books and pays upfront.
If you find that the idea of parting with that amount of money is too daunting for your mum’s then perhaps you can offer a 30 min free skype conversation. But be prepared, that not everyone will book.
This is ok as long as you factor this in when working out who to give these free sessions to. Do not worry however, this is a very common form of marketing, this is based on the theory you need to give before you actually get paid. This is the price we are paying for being able to promote for free on social media.
Skype calls support:
This is probably my favourite! You can be anywhere in the world, doing whatever you are doing and earning money for your expertise. You need to be little bit organised and manage your time effectively. If you arrange a Skype call ensure that you are waiting by your computer, phone 10 minutes before the call.
One of the top notch ‘celebrity’ maternity nurse practitioners is charging £80 per hour or £45 per ½ hour for a phone call and 24 hour or weekly email support : http://www.rachelsbabies.com/consultancy/
These are just few ideas of what you can do outside of the standard maternity nurse practitioner placements. I hope this has been of help to you and if you are a student of HATA and want to discuss this further I am happy to speak to you about these ideas and any others you may have.
