Finally, 6 years after my experience as a student observing a midwife’s use of acupuncture in practice, I start the training this Friday. I am very excited and hope to offer pregnancy acupuncture clinics at the Feilding Maternity Resource Centre but I am not sure how much need or interest there will be as a few local midwives are doing the course.
I have completed one paper with Massey University but received a letter this week advising that they are discontinuing offering postgraduate papers in midwifery. If I want to complete my Certificate with Massey I will have to choose nursing or general papers. I am extremely disappointed as I believe that some face-to-face contact is necessary in my learning processes and Massey is reasonably close.
I am now going to have to research Otago Polytech and Victoria University’s postgraduate programmes to see what papers I can do do complete the qualification. Ideally I would like to do an evidence-based practice paper and a research paper as foundations for the likelihood that I will go on to a Master’s thesis. I was also interested in the maternal mental health or the breastfeeding papers offered by Massey but will have to investigate substitutes.
This might have a reasonable business case for Massey because of the costs of offering the programmes but the flipside is that there will be implications in the number of midwives training, and then working, in the Manawatu and we could reasonably expect a shortage in 2-3 years. Midwifery Council may well have intended this outcome but we need more midwives, not less. This probably sounds confusing…but they have also altered the programme delivery for the Bachelor of Midwifery in Palmerston North and students are having to travel to Wellington for a lot of their teaching.
The Ministry of Health has a Maternity page on their site which has PDF and Word versions of the proposed Access Agreement and the finalised Maternity Notice. I read through the 86 page Maternity Notice and prepared a summary for my colleagues and the local NZCOM have asked me to present my findings. I will also bring the access agreement to their attention as well.
I have uploaded my Maternity Notice notes (.doc) for midwives to read. The reference on the left is for the clause and the page number, eg., A4/7 is clause A4 and can be found on page 7.
I have enrolled in my first postgraduate paper at long last. To top off my craziness for 2007 I have also enrolled in a National Certificate in Adult Education and Training for the purpose of being able to offer childbirth education.
I have spruced up the NZ Midwives Email List page and imported the web ring info. Slowly working my way through fixing up the legislation, links and downloads pages. I’ve added an email form to the about page and also to the question and answer page, so send please send me your questions.
I am excited because I’ve (my employers) paid the registration, booked my flights, and booked (but still to pay) for accommodation. The conference theme is “Women and Midwives - Conscious Guardians” and it is being held in Christchurch from 18 to 20 October.
I am not looking forward to the flights, but plan to stay at Chateau on the Park which looks fabulous!
There is a television advertisement running currently that irritates me immensely. Mother bear is talking about her baby’s nutritional needs not being met by it’s diet and that she doesn’t want to progress to the “regular milk of another species”. The closing slogan is “Nature’s Next Step”.
I think this advertisement is misleading but, because of the New Zealand stance on follow-on formulas, it is not breaching what NZ signed off on the WHO code. So maybe this ad warrants a written response under the Fair Trading Act?
Demonstration of LOL position.
