Speaker: Tom McEwan and Moira Lewitt
Facilitator: Adetoro Adegoke
Respectful of ‘artistry’ within midwifery, a recent research study conducted with Professor Moira Lewitt explored how midwifery students understand the concept of professionalism and how their professional identity develops during midwifery education. Midwifery students learn and adopt complex professional behaviours in a variety of academic and clinical settings throughout their educational journey. The aims of this study were to explore how midwifery students understand the concept of professionalism and how their professional identity develops during midwifery education.. The method used a conversation about professionalism with a group of final year midwifery students that was transcribed ‘in the moment’ and immediately performed to the group as poetry. Themes emerging from analysis of the conversation are also presented as poetry. The results demonstrated that midwifery students, moving between university and practice, emphasise the importance of close connections between these spaces and the role models in them, for learning. External constraints generated a sense of fear and stress that was seen to limit midwives’ ability to properly support the needs of ‘their woman’. We concluded that the notion of ‘spaces’ is important in maternity care and developing education for future midwives. Poetry is a useful multidimensional tool in research. This utilised poetry as an innovative multidimensional tool for research. The process of conducting this research, the key themes identified and the poetry generated will be discussed in this session.
Recording: https://youtu.be/nglnqbG26vs
Speaker: Arafin Happy Mim and Toma Ray
Facilitator: Margaret Aoro Adongo and Yosef Alemayehu Gebrehiwot
We are two young midwife leaders (23 years old) in Bangladesh who are board members of our midwives’ association (MA) and have recently graduated from an international leadership development programme. One works in a government health centre, the other in a Rohingya refugee camp. During 2022 we used quality improvement (QI) methodology to help our MA recruit and retain its members, and to develop guidance on responding to various types of emergency situations, which happen frequently in Bangladesh.
Discussion: MAs are examples of women-led civil-society organisations that can improve gender-equity and access to sexual and reproductive health rights, and act as agents for the profession (Mattison et al 2021). They have potential to impact each element of the ICM’s professional framework for midwifery. As midwifery is a new profession in Bangladesh, the midwives association (the Bangladesh Midwifery Society) is led by young women who are enthusiastic but inexperienced in organisational governance and leadership. A structured programme that taught us QI methodology was helpful for our leadership development, enabling us to drive change in our workplaces and in our MA.
Conclusions/Summary: We found it hard to apply QI methods to organisational development but we made it work. By sharing our lessons learned we hope to help other midwives and midwives’ associations understand how they can improve the quality of their services.
Reference: Mattison et al (2021) doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004850
Recording: youtu.be/IcuXTEOj7WQ
