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: Keeth Mayakaduwage and Billie Bradford
Facilitator: Farah Sajidah
Background: Stillbirth bereavement care is increasingly recognised as essential. Despite guidelines for stillbirth care, gaps remain in bereaved parents experiences of compassionate care. Inadequate education in healthcare curricula may contribute to negative experiences for both families and providers. This survey assesses whether and how healthcare curricula prepare midwives to care for families experiencing stillbirth.
Methods: An international cross-sectional survey, co-designed with subject matter experts, explored midwifery students and recent graduates experiences. Outcomes included educational content and confidence in knowledge of bereavement care, measured from 1.0 (Not confident at all) to 5.0 (Extremely confident). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed.
Results: Of 127 responses from 14 countries, 87% reported receiving some level of stillbirth education. While 92% had received teaching on stillbirth definitions, only 50% had bereavement care training, and just 43% received education on investigations for stillbirth causes. Confidence was highest for defining stillbirth (4.0) but lower for bereavement care (2.6) and investigations (2.6). Only 42% felt prepared to support families, with 86% expressing a need for more clinical experience and 50% wanting more support in accessing psychological services for themselves. Qualitative analysis revealed four themes, including gaps in structured education, disconnect between theoretical and practical knowledge, workplace support deficits, and system-level barriers to holistic care.
Conclusions: Significant gaps exist in midwifery bereavement education. Strengthening curricula with structured training, greater clinical exposure, and workplace support may help in improving care and reducing provider distress. Urgent action is needed to equip midwives with the skills and confidence to support bereaved families.
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!
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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