Midwives sharing the cream of what they know

One of the comments on my post about the Group B Streptococcal pamphlet I developed suggested I should feel free to share more pamphlets. Now I do have more pamphlets that I developed a few years ago, one on gestational diabetes, one on third stage, but none of these have been kept up to date and, as all midwives will know it is quite a challenge to keep the information we share current and up to date with the latest research evidence. Although I keep as well informed as I can be on all the issues pertaining to LMC midwifery practice I cannot develop information on everything. I did study GBS in some depth as a postgraduate paper a few years ago and I have committed to trying keep the Group B Streptococcus pamphlet current and up to date.

I know that other midwives have studied a variety of topics, one of my postgraduate class members studied herpes, and produced some good concise information at that time on the implications of genital herpes in its various forms. I think it would be wonderful if we as midwives had a place where we could share the information we have spent so much time and energy developing. Of course we can publish in journals and that is a great way to share, but not all of us have the time or energy to commit to this activity. I wanted to create a place where midwives could easily share information and make it available to a wider audience. To this end I have created a group in SCRIBD where anyone can join and upload information that might be of use to midwives and to women. As discerning midwives it will be for us to decide if the information on this site is evidence based, and if it is of use to us and the women we care for.

I completed a Master of Midwifery degree a couple of years ago and the subject of my research was how midwives access and share information. Many of the midwives I spoke to said that they would love to share information that they had discovered when they had come across some particular issue in practice, but they did not want to write up a journal article. This idea of how we can share information has been something that I have pondered considerably over the last couple of years. I believe midwives have a lot of knowledge and information that would be of considerable use to others and I believe that this group may be a good place to start sharing. I welcome your thoughts and comments and if you feel the urge please join the Midwives Group in SCRIBD. At the moment there is only me and my GBS pamphlet there but I do hope that this is something that grows.

Image: Sharing the ice cream, from Clappstars photos ion Flickr.com

NZCOM conference

I am off to another conference this weekend. The New Zealand college of midwives conference. This is my opportunity to share my research with my NZ Midwifery Colleages and to see if there is any interest in a rural midwives network in New Zealand. I have been busily changing and adapting my presentation to reflect this audience and to gage interest in this concept. I will post again on my return and discuss this idea further then. In the mean time if you have any interest in a rural midwives network or a rural midwives practice community leave me a comment with your thoughts.

Carolyn's ICM presentation

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A very quick post from me. Doug and I are having a great time being together with my family in the UK. We have had a family Christening in Ireland and a family wedding celebration in Buckinghamshire. We had a lovely cruise up the Thames for this party. Have had very little time to blog about anything to this point. Leaving for a few days in Thailand soon before heading back to NZ. We also had a day in Paris after a big walk around old haunts in London - poor old feet - ouch!
I have just put my ICM presentation on slide-share and I am posting here. I will try to add the audio track I recorded during the presentation later, when I get my head around this technology.

Christine Webb at Otago Polytechnic

On Thursday I had the honour of meeting Christine Webb. Christine is the executive editor of Journal of Advanced Nursing, a prestigious international journal of nursing. Christine is also the professor of health studies at the University of Plymouth in the UK.
Christine was here to speak with staff at Otago Polytechnic about "growing a profession through research".

Her lecture discussed the various types of research. She suggested that we should not undervalue quantitative research in nursing, midwifery and allied health fields. She mentioned the preference that is often expressed in these areas for qualitative research and suggested that this is not always as well conducted or as rigorous as it could be. She spoke of the importance of looking at a phenomenon under study from more than one perspective, "triangulation". Christine also stressed the value of systematic review and suggested that this is something that we as educators could do to within our fields to support dissemination of evidence.

Christine discussed the importance of practice based on the best available evidence and spoke of research into evidence based practice which highlights the preference, in all health fields, for gaining knowledge and information from colleagues and other contacts. There is a tendency, when this is the case, for traditional practices to be promoted without good supporting evidence. This can lead to practices which have been proven to be ineffective, or even harmful, being continued in practice. She gave examples of this, for example pressure area care. This relates to my own research which found a similar preference amongst rural midwives, some of whom had small groups with whom they shared information and some of whom did not have this opportunity. The challenge is to get information about evidence for practice to these groups to support change in practice. However I do not believe it is enough to only get the information out there. In many instances I beleive it is important for some role modeling of the new practice to be available. For example one of the participants in my study commented that she would like to start using a sterile water block for lower back pain in labour. This is something that has been known about for some time but she has never seen it done in practice and so feels unable to take that step and try it in practice herself.

Christine suggested that one answer is for educators to get out into the workplace and make themselves known, being a resource for evidence for practice. I can see this is something that might help in some way but I think we need greater recognition of the importance of social networks and communities of practice (COP) to learning, we need to find innovative ways to utilise COP to disseminate information and evidence and we need to find way for role modeling innovations based on evidence. I see online resources as one way in which this might be achieved.