Speaker: Jessica Brumley
Facilitator: Caitlin Goodwin
Midwifery has played a critical role in maternal and newborn care throughout our history, yet its integration into the healthcare system has been marked by challenges and transformation. This presentation explores the historical trajectory of midwifery. The current landscape highlights a growing recognition of midwifery’s benefits, including improved maternal outcomes, reduced interventions, and enhanced patient-centered care. Despite this progress, barriers such as restrictive regulations, inconsistent legislative policies, and disparities in access persist.
Looking ahead, the future of midwifery integration depends on policy reform, interprofessional collaboration, and public awareness to strengthen midwives’ role in addressing the maternal health crisis. A strong professional association is critical in advancing the midwifery agenda and strengthening the profession.
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Speaker: Jessie Johnson-Cash
Facilitator: Mutiara Dien Safitri
Background: Midwifery students juggle academic pressures, personal obligations, and the transition to clinical practice, often leading to burnout and stress. Activities that build resilience are beneficial in facilitating student engagement and promoting emotional wellbeing.
Objectives: This study evaluates the effectiveness of Student Midwife Support Circles (SMSC) as a co-curricular peer support activity, in building a sense of belonging and professional identity, and developing emotional wellbeing.
Methods: Participants were recruited from past and current midwifery students at a regional Australian university. A mixed-method approach used a cross-sectional online survey and individual interviews. Quantitative data (n=31) was reported as descriptives and compared based on attendance at the SMSCs. Qualitative data from both the survey (n=31) and interviews (n=3) was analysed using thematic analysis.
Results: Compared to students (n=9) who had not attended SMSCs, students who attended any number of SMSCs (n=22) reported greater compassion satisfaction and slightly higher self-efficacy. In addition, attendance significantly improved students’ views that support groups reduced stress whilst on placements, improved belonging to the profession and in becoming a better midwife, and increased student well-being. The thematic analysis confirmed these results, and the value of an academic run the support group.
Conclusions: Students who have been to any number of SMSCs have much more favourable views of the usefulness of these groups and there is some improvement in the satisfaction of care they provide and their confidence in dealing with challenges.
Speaker: Kate Greenstock
Facilitator: Ally Anderson
Merely existing as a midwife in much of the world is a political act, flourishing collectively is our outrageous next step!
At its core, flourishing means staying connected to ourselves – and to each other – even as we face the psychological challenges of this work. Experiences of trauma exposure and moral injury connect us as global midwives despite our differing contexts. And yet they so often disconnect us from ourselves and the families we serve.
Our time together will acknowledge the realities AND explore how we go on sustaining ourselves in midwifery by proactively connecting to our purpose, our power, our body, our breath. Just as we ground and encourage a woman in labour, come be grounded and encouraged!
Speakers: Pronita Raha, Joy Kemp and Judith McAra-Couper
Facilitator: Elisa Segoni
Development of midwife faculty is key for quality midwifery education but globally the quality and availability of programmes to develop midwife faculty is variable. In Bangladesh, where international-standard midwifery education is still new, faculty do not yet meet the ICM midwife teacher standard. Faculty are nurse-midwives, though the new generation of direct-entry midwives will soon take up positions in education. This presentation describes a peer-mentorship programme for midwifery faculty in Bangladesh, enabling them to teach the new curriculum through non-didactic pedagogical approaches in theory and practice settings.
In 2021, twenty national peer-mentors received online preparation by midwifery faculty from New Zealand. A series of national and local stakeholder briefings took place at key points throughout the programme, COVID-19 permitting. From 2022-2024 peer-mentors conducted in-person quarterly visits to midwifery education institutions in Bangladesh, providing mentorship to 370 midwifery faculty and monitoring the quality of midwifery education. A digital community of practice was created to connect faculty with the peer-mentors, with each other and with teaching resources. Baseline and endline data were collected using a checklist based on WHO midwifery educator competencies, then entered onto a digital dashboard; qualitative data were collected by survey questionnaire then analysed thematically.
A process evaluation of the programme in 2024 found that peer-mentorship had been effective in enabling faculty to implement the curriculum, to improve the learning environment and increase students’ exposure to midwife-led care models in practice. The programme may not be generalisable across all midwifery education institutions or outside of Bangladesh.
Speaker: Yvonne Meyer
Facilitator: Celine Lemay
Sages-femmes dans certaines publications. C’est le cas pour l’inscription de notre activité professionnelle au patrimoine immatériel UNESCO où, dans l’annonce en français, le mot sage-femme est absent du titre. Comment sont présentées les sages-femmes ailleurs ? Neuf documents ont été repérés qui ont pour titre l’art, les soins, la pratique, les sciences ou la profession de sage-femme. Les résumés de ces documents seront présentés, ainsi que l’analyse réalisée, basée sur les critères de soins centrés sur le patient (Rycroft-Maloine, 2004). Les résultats montrent que toutes ces formulations sont polysémiques et qu’elles n’ont pas exactement la même portée. Par contre, toutes présentent haut et fort les sages-femmes et ce qui les caractérise. Si UNESCO avait titré « Les soins de sage-femme : connaissances, savoir-faire et pratiques », les sages-femmes seraient visibles partout dans le monde francophone.
The theme of the intervention is motivated by a regrettable problem of visibility of midwives in certain publications. This is the case for the inclusion of our professional activity in UNESCO’s intangible heritage list, where, in the French announcement, the word sage-femme is absent from the title. How are midwives presented elsewhere? Nine documents have been identified that deal with the art, care, practice, science or profession of midwifery. Summaries of these documents will be presented, along with the analysis carried out, based on the criteria of patient-centred care (Rycroft-Maloine, 2004). The results show that all these formulations are polysemous and do not have exactly the same scope. However, they all make a strong case for midwives and what characterises them. If UNESCO had published the title « Les soins de sage-femme: connaissances, savoir-faire et pratiques » (‘Midwifery: knowledge, skills and practices’), midwives would be visible throughout the French-speaking world.
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