Midwife Supervisor

CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND 

The International Rescue Committee has been in Nigeria since October 2012 and came in response to a widespread flood disaster. IRC’s Emergency Response Team, with its local partner, Civil Society Coalition for Poverty Eradication (SCOPE), implemented projects to support food security, livelihoods, nutrition, and WASH in Kogi State. At the beginning of January 2014, IRC shifted its geographical location to the Northeast, in Adamawa state to provide humanitarian response to the conflict-affected populations. In the Northeast, IRC has two operational offices in Adamawa state (Yola and Mubi) and three operational offices in Borno state (Maiduguri, Gwoza and Monguno). In both states, IRC is providing humanitarian support to internally displaced populations hosted in IDP camps, camp-like settings, host communities, and returnee populations.

Currently, IRC Nigeria implements programs in Primary Health Care (PHC), Nutrition, Environmental Health (EH), Women Protection and Empowerment (WPE), Protection, Child protection, Education, Food security & livelihoods. With a background of poor Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) indices, made worse by the ongoing humanitarian crises and advent of COVID-19 pandemic; the RMNCH outcomes in Northeast Nigeria could face a downturn, without intensified intervention. Over the years, the IRC has provided comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services including Family Planning (FP), Antenatal Care (ANC), Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (BEmONC), Skilled birth deliveries, Post-Natal Care (PNC), treatment and prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), Post Abortion Care (PAC) and Clinical Care for Sexual Assault Survivors (CCSAS). The IRC seek to engage the service of a midwife supervisor to support project implementation of quality SRHR services in Gwoza LGA.

Job Overview/Summary:

The Midwife Supervisor will support the implementation of the “Broadening Emergency and Graduation Efforts (BEGE) in Borno” project implemented in consortium with Mercy corps in Gwoza LGA. She will be supervising the reproductive health clinical activities and oversee facility and staff daily performance to ensure quality and timely delivery of rights based SRHR services while maintaining high level of ethical and professional standards.

The position will be 100% based in Gwoza LGA.

The Midwife supervisor reports directly to the Program Manager.

Specific Responsibilities:

Clinical Supervision and Service delivery:  

• Supervise and supports the provision of ALL reproductive health clinical services and consultations at the IRC’s comprehensive women centers (CWC).
• Support implementation of minimum initial service package (MISP) for SRHR in Gwoza.
• Provide ante-natal consultations, skilled birth deliveries and after delivery follow ups, post-natal consultations, family planning consultations, post-abortion care, clinical management of rape, syndromic management of STI, new-born vaccinations according to MoH/International protocol and liaising with the referral focal person about patients who need special care and referrals.
• Serve as the focal person for the clinical care for sexual assault survivors (CCSAS) and referral linkage for survivors.
• Provide counselling on family planning and provide FP commodities according to the client’s informed choice.
• Maintain infection prevention and control within and around the facilities.
• Ensure all facilities adhere to instrument processing and sterilization protocols.
• Keep inventories and supervise the use of medical devices, ensuring they are clean and follow up with logistics for regular maintenance.
• Ensure the availability of essential drugs and SRH supplies including family planning commodities.
• Liaise with the pharmacy warehouse to prevent stock out of essential drugs, other medical supplies while working with the Program Manager and RH Managers to procure other consumables required in the facilities.
• Being responsible for ensuring that all the administrative procedures, patients’ data and documents are filled in correctly and registered for compiling monthly reports reflecting the activity in the department.

Technical Support and Quality of Care Management:

• Ensure all SRHR services are in line with national/adopted protocols and RH policies and guidelines are well understood by midwives and other support staff in the facilities.
• Ensuring that all staff using medical devices are qualified and trained, cleaning and minor maintenance tasks are performed according to the protocols, reporting any malfunction to the project biomedical service.
• Ensure all the staff follow the established IPC standard and infection prevention protocol.
• Ensure all facilities adhere to instrument processing and sterilization protocols.
• Conduct quarterly clinical skills assessment for the midwives and follow up on areas that need improvement.
• Provide on-the-job training to all midwives and support staff, define their training needs, and support the Program Manager to implement them according to project objectives.
• Conduct periodic facility readiness assessment and follow-up on service point improvement action plan.

Staff Management:

• Routinely monitor, supervise staff performance according to their job description, conduct performance evaluation and provide written feedback in a timely manner.
• Monitor staff daily attendance to duty posts and ensure time sheets are correctly filled and submitted monthly.
• Ensure staff leave plan is followed and managed in a way that ensure smooth program continuity.
• Develop and manage monthly midwives and clinic support staff roster where applicable.

Representation, Project Implementation and Reporting:

• Focal person for intersectoral integration between Reproductive Health and Women Protection and Empowerment sector.
• Raises Item forecast and payment request for reproductive health program and provide information that will support BVA update.
• Ensure teamwork and maintain relationship with different sectors and government agencies.
• Responsible for validation of program data and timely submission to M&E on weekly basis.
• Work with M&E team to analyze data on a weekly/monthly basis, feeds information back to the program, and adapts strategies accordingly.
• Provide weekly/monthly activity reports to the supervisor.

Others:

• Consistently and proactively monitors and assesses the safety and security of the team; promptly reporting concerns or incidents to IRC management and liaising with community leaders and others external parties as required to maintain/enhance the security environment for IRC programs.
• Other duties as assigned by the supervisor to enable and promote IRC programs.

Key Working Relationships:

• Position reports to: Program Manager
• Position directly Supervises: Midwives and Clinic support staff
• Indirectly reporting: Reproductive Health Manager, Senior Reproductive Health Manager, Health Coordinator and Field Coordinator.
• Other Internal and/or external contacts: Health program staff and managers, and ALL other IRC sectors.
• External: Other partner NGO’s, MoH, SPHCDA, LGA PHC department.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education:

• Registered Midwife (bachelor’s degree in nursing and midwifery science an added advantage)
• Must possess VALID practicing license by Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria.

Work Experience:

• Minimum of 3 years clinical experience as a Midwife working in an INGO.
• Experience in supervising staff at the primary health care level.
• Ability to work with displaced communities with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
• Able to work in a location with basic living conditions and with limited communication options.
• Experienced in report writing.
• Strong clinical skills on relevant SRHR service delivery; FP, PAC, CCSAS, BEmONC, ANC/PNC and safe delivery.
• Full professional competency in Microsoft Office Suite, (especially Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint) is highly recommended.
• Excellent interpersonal skills; culturally and socially sensitive.
• Ability to independently organize work, prioritize tasks, respect and adheres to deadlines.
• Fluency in both English and Hausa (Hausa is an added advantage).

Standards of Professional Conduct

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – Code of Conduct.  These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability.  In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Harassment-Free Workplace, Fiscal Integrity, Anti-Retaliation, Combating Trafficking in Persons and several others. We encourage women and persons with disability to apply.