Staff Profile

  • Cheryl commenced her midwifery studies in 1999 and upon qualification secured a post in a busy inner-city midwifery unit as a rotational midwife. Cheryl’s passion lay within labour ward, caring for women who presented with complexities but also enjoyed giving care to those women labouring within the midwife led unit. After 5 years of working within the hospital, Cheryl’s career path changed and she began practising as community midwife. This role led onto Cheryl securing a secondment for a specialist midwife role in teenage pregnancy where she gained a vast amount of experience within safeguarding.

    After 12 years of working for the same NHS organisation, Cheryl moved NHS trust and became an antenatal/postnatal ward manager. Within this same organisation Cheryl was appointed the role of maternity matron and gained a wealth of understanding with regards to Leadership, staff management, project management, clinical governance, audit, change implementation and trust guidelines.

    Cheryl joined the University of Northampton as a Lecturer in Midwifery in 2017 and was registered as a Midwifery Teacher on the Nursing and Midwifery Council Register in 2018. Within that same year, Cheryl became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Cheryl was also a Supervisor of Midwives (a role that no longer exists within midwifery) but felt the need to complete a bridging course to acquire the certification as a Professional Midwifery Advocate.  Within this role Cheryl supports student midwives attending the University of Northampton to enable sourcing solutions to their problems. This enhances their resilience in both the academic and practical setting.

    Cheryl is passionate about supporting student midwives to aid with achieving their goals. To develop her skills further and to positively impact the student midwife experience, Cheryl is currently undertaking a PGCert in Coaching and Mentoring. 

  • Cheryl delivers teaching across all modules in the Midwifery undergraduate curriculum and is currently module lead for MID2027 – Integrated Care for Women with Complex Needs. Additionally, Cheryl is module lead for MID1024, MID2031 and MID3027 which supports and develops the student midwife’s skills with regards to medicine calculations and administration.

    Cheryl is the named Professional Midwifery Advocate at the University of Northampton.

  • For publications, projects, datasets, research interests and activities, view Cheryl Thomas’s research profile on Pure, the University of Northampton’s Research Explorer.

  • Power A, Thomas C (2018) Restorative supervision for student midwives: The professional midwifery advocate in the classroom. British Journal of Midwifery 26 (5) 344-346