Meet Jo Clarke
Please meet the latest member to join our JJ&A team of expert witnesses, Jo Clarke is a NMC registered Senior Midwife, she qualified as a Midwife in 2007, Jo has over 15 years of clinical experience in both community and hospital settings, including antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal.
Jo currently works within a large tertiary referral centre of excellence for maternal and foetal medicine at Southampton’s Princess Anne Hospital, dealing with complex pregnancies and complex medical histories.
On a day-to-day basis, Jo manages a busy, fast-paced, and high-risk triage department for unscheduled care. The department is the single point of support for the multidisciplinary team and patients. As a team leader within the Maternity Day Assessment Unit, Jo provides various aspects of care - including assessments, presentation scans, high-risk deliveries and infant and new-born physical examinations (she is qualified at Masters level) - within urgent, non-urgent and remote settings.
During her career, Jo has developed her clinical expertise working with diverse groups of patients, staff and external agencies, requiring effective communication and an ability to build relationships and promote teamwork. Working in collaboration with another trust, Jo has been instrumental in implementing service improvements across safety and quality.
In her current role, Jo manages a midwifery team and is also a trained Practice Assessor for student midwives, providing training within the multidisciplinary team. Jo really loves to make a difference, whether that’s through training and managing, or through pastoral care. As Jo says “working together with my team, and with expectant mothers to achieve a desired birth is one of my greatest joys!”
Continuing the theme of ‘making a difference’, Jo has twice travelled to the poorest parts of northern Ghana to undertake charitable work involving the training and education of midwives and medical staff on a range of emergency procedures and infection prevention techniques. Whilst there, she also delivered quality tuition guidance and support to both student and qualified midwives, along with delivering babies!
Becoming an expert witness has offered Jo an additional string to her bow and, as Jo says, “becoming an expert witness was the natural next step for me as someone who’s logical, thorough and confident in their clinical ability. Plus, I wanted to share my experience, knowledge and expertise to assist the Court
In her spare time, Jo loves camping, hiking, walking her dog and spending time on the beach. She lives in a small village in Hampshire, somewhere between the beautiful New Forest and the sea, and has two grown-up children (born at the same hospital in Southampton where she works). Jo’s next adventure is to take up paddleboarding!
Jo currently works for Jane James & Associates providing Breach of Duty Reports for use in litigation and is instructed by both Claimant and Defendant firms.
