Pregnant women, and the midwives and nurses who care for them, make all sorts of decisions together during pregnancy, birth and a baby’s first weeks of life.
Is giving birth at home or the hospital right for her? How can she keep mobile during labour? What tests and treatments are available and how do they fit with her philosophy? Is she likely to encounter mental health issues and what can be done to help her with the transition to motherhood?
Like most other questions in health care, the answers are found in research – either by drawing on the work of others, or by doing the research themselves.
Beverley O’Brien
Beverley O’Brien, a UBC nursing alumna and registered midwife and nurse, wants to foster such a culture of investigation by practicing midwives and nurses. So she made a donation to the Faculty of Medicine for a new student award.
Aimed at midwives and nurses pursuing graduate studies in maternity care at UBC, the Strengthening Mothers through Perinatal Research Award will provide one student each year with $1,500 toward tuition and other expenses while at university.
“The focus of the award is on maternity care providers who want to generate evidence to help women in pregnancy, birth and their transition to motherhood,” says Dr. O’Brien, a Professor Emerita of Nursing at the University of Alberta. “I think women become stronger through knowledge and trust in the person who is supporting them. To achieve that trust, I really believe the providers have to generate the best available evidence that is acceptable to the women they serve.”
Since its launch in 2002, UBC’s midwifery program has focused on increasing the number of midwives practicing in British Columbia through its undergraduate program. Today, nearly half of midwives practicing in B.C. are graduates of UBC.
But most maternity care research, at UBC and elsewhere, is done by academics in other disciplines, such as social scientists, or by midwives and nurses pursuing graduate programs in areas such as public health.
Michelle Butler, Director of the UBC Midwifery Program and Professor in the Department of Family Practice, is working to remedy that situation. Together with midwifery leaders from the Midwives Association of B.C., the College of Midwives of B.C., Perinatal Services B.C. and the health authorities, she launched the B.C. Midwifery Network last year to support the ongoing development of midwifery research and practice and midwifery as a professional discipline.
Ultimately, Dr. Butler aims to launch a graduate program for midwives at UBC.
“We are a small program with big ambitions,” she says.
The new award will not only advance the program’s research agenda, but will help midwives, nurses and their clients make more informed decisions.
“There is so much we don’t know about physiological birth and so much to explore,” Dr. Butler says. “Midwives, doctors and nurses make assumptions about what women want. We need to do more to ask women about their needs and preferences so we can deliver a healthy baby and a good experience for the mother.”