My name is Katelyn Edel, and I am the new intern for the Department of Research, where I work closely with Bruce Ackerman, Jen Brown, and Sarita Bennett.
The MANA and CfM Joint Position Statement on Water Immersion During Labor and Birth is a position paper written for a broad audience including midwives and other birthcare professionals, consumers, doulas, childbirth educators, and policy makers. It is co-authored by the Midwives Alliance of North America and Citizens for Midwifery.
I am your Director of Events, Nicole Marie White, CPM. I am from Michigan and currently working as a member of the Coalition to License Certified Professional Midwives in Michigan. We just passed the house in December!
In the past month, two new studies have been released - one in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the other in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ)- examining out-of-hospital birth outcomes. The CMAJ study examined 2006-09 provincial health records while the NEJM study analyzed two years of Oregon vital statistics data.
We hear the terms “evidence-based practice” (EBP) or “evidence-informed practice” (EIP) used often in the healthcare world, being cited as an expected and central component of high-quality care delivery. But what do these terms really mean? There is a misconception that in EBP/EIP approaches, “research evidence” automatically equates to “what I should do in practice”. This, however, is simply not true. EBP/EIP rests in the triad intersection between the best available research with your professional expertise as the practitioner alongside the client’s individual values, needs, and context.
Questions about the education levels and routes to certification for Certified Professional Midwives often play a role in policy discussions about birth providers, but little current evidence has been available to inform these conversations.
A new article in the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health takes a close look at data from the NARM 2011 Survey. We asked Melissa Cheyney, lead author of the article, to share with us this FAQ. This piece was developed to inform midwives, consumers, and policy makers on the outcomes.
“Planned Home VBAC in the United States, 2004–2009: Outcomes, Maternity Care Practices, and Implications for Shared Decision Making” came out on August 26th as an e-pub ahead of print in the journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care. It provides a much-needed analysis of VBACs in the home setting in the United States.
In 2008 the International Confederation of Midwives took a serious global look at the health of mothers and babies and developed a series of core documents to support the growth and utilization of midwives throughout the world. In June 2011 the ICM Council endorsed new global midwifery standards for education, regulation, and association – the "3 pillars" for the profession. The World Health Organization uses the ICM Core Competencies to inform midwifery organizations and government agencies to improve the health of mothers and babies world-wide.
