Elsie Gayle is a midwife in independent practice. Having consolidated a varied NHS career, she lived and worked away in the Caribbean and Africa, returning to the UK in 2002.

Passionate about facilitating choice and quality in maternity care, she works towards the amelioration of inequalities in service provision; and the poor outcomes for disadvantaged women in particular.
Researching how Organisational Culture impacts the profession led her to set up a Community of Practice for midwives, to support the creation and sustenance of an empowered workforce and a safe work environment for the delivery of quality maternity care.

She is especially interested in the concept of ‘Cultural Safety’ as a simple mechanism which allows consumers to say whether or not services are safe for them to approach and use.