| Home | Bookmark | Tell | Active petitions in over 75 countries | Follow GoPetition |
Petition Tag - midwifery
We are future midwives. So needed. So close to qualifying. We need your help.
The UK is dangerously short of midwives. The midwives surviving the profession are dedicated and hard-working. The women giving birth to their babies need competent healthy and loving midwives alongside them at this precious and potentially dangerous and awesome event in their lives.
The tax-payer is spending many thousands of pounds preparing future midwives.
One of these future midwives is 4 months away from the completion of a 3 year course demanding 150 hours a month of placement and lectures plus many additional hours of personal study.
She is a mother of 2 very young children. She is a partner, daughter, sister and friend. She has been wonderfully mentored and trained by dedicated, overworked midwives. She has lived near the poverty line, suffered ill health and lost many nights sleep to fulfill her dream of becoming a midwife.
She has personally and safely ushered women and infants into motherhood. A privilege that she has dedicated her all to train for and a role that she has been assessed on and performs more than competently.
She narrowly failed an essay on the public health role of the midwife 3 times.
4 months before realisation of her dream she has been kicked off the course.
Please could you 'like' this page and sign our petition in support of her appeal for a chance to complete the course so that many more women to come can have the benefit of this loving dedicated future midwife alongside them. The UK so desperately needs dedicated midwives. So much has been given by the tax-payer, mentors, lecturers and students already. Kicking her off the course at this stage would be a tragic, heartless, short-sighted and wasteful act.
2. Support student nurses to become Midwives 
NSW Health recently decided that 3rd Year Nursing Students cannot apply for post-graduate Midwifery places for the following year.
Many students are just completing their nursing degrees in order to go into Midwifery, and will be forced into New Graduate nursing places instead of fulfilling their dreams. This will be very costly for NSW Health, as it is a significant use of resources to look after newly graduated nurses in their first year. These resources would be better spent on graduates who wish to be nurses, not those who were forced to use it as a stepping stone to midwifery.
With the new National Education standards about to come into effect, it is likely that these students will now have to endure another 3 years of study, in a separate Bachelor's degree, in order to become midwives. This is extremely unfair on them, and is happening only because they graduate in the middle of a messy, ill-thought out change in Nurse and Midwife Registration in Australia.
University of Newcastle Students learned this only weeks after learning that the Graduate Diploma had been cancelled at that uni, without their knowledge, a double whammy for these students - they can't go through their own university, and can't go into the correspondence course either! This also means there will be a 2-3 year gap in midwife graduates in the Hunter region - is this really what we want with the shortage of midwives?
We were promised properly resourced quality nursing/midwifery services
- Public Sector nurses and midwives across metropolitan South Australia are taking action because the State Government has failed to deliver on its promise to support positive and resourced quality nursing and midwifery services.
It’s about time that these resources are delivered
- A promise was made, in February 2007, to provide more nursing and midwifery staff for direct clinical care so that other nursing and midwifery staff (including Level 2 and 3) could spend time performing activities that have an important impact on patients.
- Since this time, we have repeatedly requested that the resources be provided.
- To date, we have not been provided with a response or timeframe.
It’s the time we need to provide quality patient careThe failure to resource quality nursing/midwifery services has a negative impact on patient care. Failure to meet the promise means that less time is available for important work including:
- Quality improvement
- Infection control
- Rostering (ensuring adequate and appropriate staff on shift)
- Clinical teaching supervision / support of new staff
- Professional / knowledge development and resources
- Co-ordination management and planning.
We have exhausted all other options to make the State Government deliver
- Because we have not received a response, we are taking action so that the State Government will provide us with the resources we need to provide quality nursing/midwifery services.
- We regret that we have been forced to take action, but we are taking action because of our commitment to the community and your health needs.
- We ask for your patience and support in our campaign – this is a campaign to ensure the community gets quality nursing/midwifery services and that’s why ‘It’s About Time’.
4. Implement caseload midwifery care on the Sunshine Coast
Introduction: A caseload model of midwifery occurs when each midwife carries a caseload whereby he/she is responsible for a particular woman’s care during pregnancy, labour, birth and in the early weeks after the baby is born (Page et al 2000).
The woman has a known carer throughout her pregnancy, and also becomes familiar with other midwives in the same group practice who may be on call during her labour. The midwife is available in a flexible 24 hour schedule, with time rostered off call in consultation with other midwives in her group.
Typically one midwife will have a primary caseload of approximately 35-40 women per year, providing care through all stages of pregnancy, birthing and postnatal. This primary midwife also is the “back up” for approx the same number of women for other midwives in her group practice.
Fore more details, see Midwifery: Models of Care - Implementation Guide, available at http://www.health.qld.gov.au/ocno/content/middy_models.pdf
There is a group of midwives at Nambour Hospital who are very keen to move towards these changes. Anne Moore, who wrote the above guide, and who has previously implemented case-load midwifery at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane, now works here on the Sunshine Coast, and is available to lead & support the implementation of these changes at Nambour Hospital.
What we need is for the executives and the directors of the Nambour Hospital Board to realise is that this is precisely what we as consumers want.
5. Support Funded Yukon Midwifery!
Midwifery care is included in the health care insurance plans of six Canadian provinces and territories and has been shown to be a safe, family-centered, cost effective option for low-risk childbearing families in Canada; there is also a shortage of physicians taking maternity patients in the Yukon.
Links
http://www.chsrf.ca/mythbusters/pdf/boost6_e.pdf
http://www.aom.on.ca/Communications/Government_Relations/Benefits_of_Midwifery.aspx
“The integration of midwifery into the obstetrical health-care team is fostering excellence in maternity care for Canadian women and their families.”
Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.
