Ep 69 @Academic_Liz and the 3rd year anniversary wrap up

Ep 69 (ibit.ly/Re5V) @Academic_Liz and the 3rd anniversary wrap up just in time for the end of the year

Many thanks to all you gave me their time and please say yes when contacted in 2023 to tell your story!!

@PhDMidwives  #MidTwitter @world_midwives #midwiferyresearch #midwives

Discover how midwifery research transcends borders and unites us in the shared quest for knowledge. As we celebrate the end of our third year, we're filled with gratitude for the stories that have connected us with listeners in over 81 countries. This episode is a tapestry woven from the diverse voices of midwifery. 

Join us on a journey that takes us from the traditional to the innovative, where the pressing issues of maternal health care demand our attention and action. We tackle the stark realities of maternal suicide, navigate the complexities of childbirth experiences globally, and cherish the wisdom shared at the ICM conference in Bali. With an eye on the future, we eagerly anticipate the wealth of knowledge that awaits us at the upcoming midwives' gathering in Portugal. This episode captures the pulse of midwifery research, pulsating with the stories of transformation, resilience, and the indomitable spirit of midwives  reminding us that change is born from both passion and research.

As we wrap up, we're not just looking back; we're reaching out to you for the road ahead. Your voices and suggestions are the lifeblood of our conversations, and we invite you to share your thoughts on who should join us next. We're committed to keeping the dialogue alive and engaging, and your participation is key to shaping our future episodes. Here's to a safer and more informed 2024, and to the enduring power of connection and community within the world of midwifery. Thank you for walking this path with us.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

And welcome to Through the Pinard, your conversational podcast, talking to midwives around the world about the research they are doing to improve midwifery practice. This research can range from small quality improvement programs and projects to those starting partway through or just finishing their postgraduate studies, and to those that have been there, done that and got the t-shirt. So settle back and enjoy the conversation and remember you can continue the conversation on Twitter after you finish listening, and thank you for joining me. We are at the end of our third year and I am eternally grateful that people keep listening and keep giving me suggestions on people who they want to listen to. So the list has already started. I'm editing for next year and I've got three in the can and I've got two more interviews lined up. So next year is going to be starting towards the end of January and we will kind of go through, hopefully without the blip that we had this year around August September, because life got a little bit too busy. But anyway, this year we have had 20 episodes going through, three of which were conference wrap-ups, so we're back to pre-COVID days that felt like this year. It was so cool to be able to catch up with people in the flesh, especially after speaking to them everyone online over the last few years and also to have a kind of milestone.

Speaker 1: 1:50

So at the beginning of this year this podcast was heard in 70 countries, which blew my mind, and by this morning checking it, it was 81 countries. So, depending on how you look at that, if you look at it as a proportion of the world of 194 countries, that's 42% of countries. Somebody in each country has heard it. Or if you go by the ICM members list, then they have 124 countries as members. Some have got more than one association, so that means 65% of the countries in the ICM. Somebody has actually listened to this podcast and that's cool. It's about accessibility, it's about giving people another way to hear on people's journeys, about getting into research, doing research and hopefully showing that it's not about intelligence, it's about determination and persistence and support and that's one of the main themes that's been coming through all of the interviews that and the chats that have been doing through here.

Speaker 1: 3:01

So let's have a little bit of a look and see where we've gone this year and the journey that we've gone through. So we've started this year with the amazing Billy Hunter and, looking in particular at emotions in a midwifery, how her work over a long period of time got into collaborations with the World Health Organization, looking at educational self-assessment and her absolutely love of ethnographic methodology and really getting involved and watching and learning not only about the people you're watching but learning about yourself and how you react as well. From there we had another great Leslie Barclay and looking at doing what she felt was worthwhile, important work. She also looked at sexual health within couples. But she's also been in one of the very unique positions by being one of our grand arms. I suppose you could say in midwifery that she was one of the leaders in the first people to get a midwifery based PhD. But she's also then supervised other leaders in midwifery and now seeing what her graduate students have become the next generation of leaders and are now the leading experts in research in a variety of different areas and she's still involved in research and supporting and mentoring.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Next episode 51 was Boupay and a really interesting insight into how midwifery in Zambia is working. And I have to admit I really enjoy the conversations I have with midwives from other countries because we are so used to the way that midwifery works within our own countries and that's our norm. That's nothing wrong with that. But I love learning and understanding where the challenges are and in what we take for granted in our own practice and then understanding that when we think about rubber gloves we think about they're easily accessible. But then you go to other places and you think of other countries and it can even be within our own countries and different socioeconomic environments that those are not necessarily what is going to be available to everyone. So having those information and kind of listening to what people are doing to change champions and Bupa is certainly one of the change champions in making it small, going into an area and just doing small changes for local areas. You don't have to change the world as much as we want to, but if you change practice, one small area, you change practice then for the women and families and the people in that area. So looking at her history with delayed chord clamping but and anemia within low and middle resource countries, but also listening to how she's changing and her wider views on wanting to change Midwifery and support midwifery in Zambia, and she's continued to do that. Karen of 50 to episode 52 then talked about her asthma management plan and the toolkit and once again lived about the fact that she was never going to study again and how you never say never because it seems to come around more often or not, that opportunities are in you, offered to you, that are Worth saying yes to, because you never know where they end up going and with a lot of people they end up with postgraduate or they end up with research opportunities that would never have thought about doing.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Episode 53 and Marita and hers was a very different PhD. So when most of the people's PhDs we've talking about have been a traditional monolith of writings anywhere between 70 to 100 pages, 100,000 words, and this mammoth document, there are different ways of doing it. So you can also do a paper by publication. So you put Publications together that have a common theme and then you write an introduction to how they are a common theme. You then present your papers and then you put a summary and title together. There is also the PhD artifact and Exo Jesus. So once again, formal words, but basically means that you produce something creative and then you have the theoretical explanation of why it works and how it works and supporting Literature next to it, and this is what Marita did, and looking at her romance novel. So her character was a veteran who was disabled and wanting to get pregnant. So looking at sexual health, looking at disability, looking at pregnancy. So her romance novel was then followed by an exo Jesus, so the formal component of it, and she looked at the theory behind it and that was fascinating to read and so, once again, the link to her book is very much in the episode link.

Speaker 1: 8:18

And then in May we had the 15th Virtual International Day of the Midwife Conference, which is a 24 hour free online conference that has been happening on the 5th of May and it was brilliant to be a part of behind the scenes this year, as opposed to being a facilitator for the last few years and a presenter way back in 17 for the first time and it has the unique Presentation of being free Online and you can pop in. There are two presentations every hour, except when we've got a keynote speaker, and it was really the depth and display within the speakers and within the posters as well. And this year we also got to chat to Well, last year I think we started it chatting to the people who had posters and so that kind of went out in a little podcast chat on the YouTube channel of virtual midwives and they were quite a lot and they end up being 48 presentations in that 24 hour period. It is an extreme sport to stay up and to listen to them all. However, they are all recorded and put onto the YouTube channel for listening to later and in fact, you can listen to quite a few of the past conferences sessions as well.

Speaker 1: 9:39

We then went over to the ditch and we spoke to Susan and One of the things that really still sticks with me and talking and her episode is when she was talking about the birth of a Marry woman and the baby coming out and the face of the ancestors and this whole spiritual process and and like Karyos time and that, like when she was talking to me, gave me goose pimples and even now thinking about it, that whole spirituality side of birth is something that is Hard to quantify but the stories prove that it happens all around the world and that's that magical, definitely art section of the art and science of midwifery. Jillian then spoke about the differences between midwifery in Malta and then in the UK and from her backgrounds as well, and talking about traumatic childbirth and it's something that is international and looking at who decides what is traumatic but then being able to Look at a different country and go how do you yourself survive in a different practice and process as well? Episode 57, and we had Laura Briggs talking about something that, unfortunately, is not necessarily spoken about enough and that's maternal suicide. It is still the highest death rate for women postpartum women in the first 12 months and looking at what the midwifery role is and the work that she's doing with her research grouping and funding, and looking at how to actually talk to women who have attempted maternal suicide and find out why. So, going into those really, really sensitive issues that we need to discover, because if we don't talk to these issues, if we don't talk to these women, if we don't find out what's happening with them, if we don't talk to women, even though it is a highly sensitive issue, then we can't understand the pathway of how we can go about helping them better.

Speaker 1: 12:00

And then in June I had my first ICM experience in Bali. Now, that was amazing and still utterly an amazing experience. Unfortunately, my physicality meant that I was restricted to where I could walk and what sessions I could go to, but there was so much on offer with the seven rooms. At the one time you either had your roller skates on, or you sat in one room and just stayed with the themes, which is what I tended to do. It is an eye opener to what midwifery is internationally. It is an eye opener to the community that is midwifery. It is a fabulous way to recharge your batteries on and your passion in midwifery and just sitting and chatting to people and there's so many people want to catch up with you. It felt like a selfie treasure hunt. Everyone that you'd seen would come up and grab a selfie with you, and sometimes that was the only conversations you had, but you've been talking for the last few years, so it felt quite fun in that aspect. So if you don't like having photos taken of yourself, get over it, because it is part of the games of conferences. I think these days it was interesting the focus in different countries in that so much is different, yet so much is the same internationally. Resources obviously are a really big issue Availability of resources. That includes human resources, but it is a great way and I look forward to hopefully being able to present and the next one, which will be in 2026 in Portugal, and hopefully I'll be able to present my completed PhD at that stage as well, which will be nice.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Whilst I was at the ICM conference I managed to grab a couple of people to do interviews on. One was the amazing Julie Kep, who was the chief midwife of Papua New Guinea. I think she's retired now and so, looking at the health very much, a different healthcare system in Papua New Guinea, looking at their different levels of health and where and when introducing people and midwives can change the health of the community, especially with living in the community and how that living in develops trust. And if you've got that trust within the healthcare worker then you have a better level of health because people will actually go and seek assistance from them as well. So she did something in her master's program that she then was able to return to and evaluate within her PhD and the proof was that if you have midwives who are actually in the village, workers, who actually stay there and get known, then that healthcare system improves. Mary Steen was another one who gave me some time while we were sitting in one of the big dining rooms with lots of dining kind of clatter in the background and she talked about her amazing innovation and creating the FEMPAD for perineal trauma and her line around perineal trauma, her experience of it and then going back into researching it, and we also talked about the cost of domestic violence from not only teaching students and younger midwives how to talk about it with the women and people that we care for, but also the fact that midwives are a part of the community that they care for and therefore looking at how do we support each other in that context as well, and having a positive research culture. So research is such a word that turns people off and a lot of it from talking to different people comes from poor undergraduate experiences of not understanding the process but also particularly not having an idea of the outcome. So a lot of research happens in wards that midwives will get asked to help recruit or to fill in an extra bit of paperwork that's part of a protocol, but not all of them actually get to find out what happens afterwards. So that 360 degree feedback of information coming and going back down to the staff who collected or recruited and saying, well, as a result of what you did, this is what we found out and this is how it's going to implement. So that kind of returning of that information and that executive summary back down to all levels of people within the research team helps create a positive research culture, because people then understand what it was about and where they're rolling it.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Epile 61 was Laura Abbott and looking at her PhD and subsequent studies on pregnancy in prisons, wanting to change the world in this particular area. And there's another episode that we actually got together about her group Women in prison, and it came across because of a couple of deaths of babies. The practices are there. Some things have changed. Now there's still some countries in fact I think there's 11 countries that do not put pregnant women into prisons, but UK and Australia are not one of them. So it's looking to try and work out are there alternatives if we can't get that ruling done?

Speaker 1: 17:47

And looking at the importance of the care still needed, and not just the anti-natal care, which is important as well, but the whole process of. What is it like then to go to appointments? You don't have that continuity. You don't have any control over appointments because they're not going to give you warning when you're going to get picked up, because the security of the jails has priority, but also postnatal as well, in whether you're lucky enough to get into a mothers and babies unit and therefore you can keep your baby with you in the UK it can be up to two years, but in other countries it may be that you can't have your baby. Your baby gets taken away automatically. And then we also spoke a little bit about what happens in the reconnection of that as well. So, through as an after effect of her PhD, then she's part of the creation of PIPI, which is pregnancy and prison partnership international. So, looking at it, with a group of other people who've been doing research in similar areas and trying to increase their power and the literature around what they're doing, both companions are doing and being able to create a movement that increases care.

Speaker 1: 18:59

Then we had the national ACM, so the Australian College Immigrant Free Conference here in Adelaide, which was fabulous to be at. So it's always good to have a conference in your hometown, even though I was very luxurious and decided to stay at a hotel right next door. And this was our 25th national conference and it had, once again, huge sessions open up, huge poster displays. We had students there that were volunteers, so it was great to kind of catch up with them. And once again you have multiple concurrent sessions so it is impossible to see everything. But what was really cool about this session was that at the end of the three main oral presentations that were usually 15 minutes or plus 10 minutes or five minutes questions, at the end of that two posters got to have five minutes. So the people who got posters still got five minutes to actually sit into a group and talk about it. So instead of doing a mad kind of trying to hold your lunch and do a walkthrough and a very difficult to hear presentation by the poster stands, then that was a really good addition to this conference which I hope kind of stays in other conferences as well.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Episode 63 is Sarah. So she came over for the conference I got to chat to her before she left and looking at her life's passion, which is perennial repair, and she started that as a PhD project. She then got funding to develop a course to improve regard particular to suturing and how that became, has become a business, and so that's when you're looking at her guide zone and how that now is an international business, how it's expanding, looking at helping and promoting other female texts in business as well, so becoming a business angel. So her career is very, very different to a lot of people, but as a direct influence of what she did in her PhD, which she's extremely passionate about and has the advantage of meeting so many other midwives now around the world. And episode 64 spoke to Jane Houston in America.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Now, this was our first double episode because of not only Jane's history relating from Scotland to Zimbabwe, to New Zealand, to Florida, but also because of the the American healthcare system, which majority of us knows, very different to a lot of systems around other countries that have much more nationalised system, whereas the Americas very much a statewide system. And so looking at her history so we did a two part on that and looking at her past experience, but also looking at the disparities and so being able to go from an area that didn't have a lot of autonomy for midwives and it was very obstetric run, to being able to lead and introduce water birthing and introduce midwifery autonomy into the areas that she has been a part of, to also being a part of the national organisations that speak up and help to lead, and looking at those quality improvements that need to be done and where research fits into that as well. And looking at from her and she's seen the DNP program so the Doctor of Nursing Practitioner, because in America, in majority of the states you have to be a nurse first before you can actually be a midwife, and then there are multiple different levels of midwives that are there that are quite confusing. But she talks a little bit about that as well. And then in episode 66 we are talking with Halima about Nigeria and the midwifery situation in Nigeria and looking at her research around resilience. Once again it is the difference on the resources that are around. It's looking at how a lot of people are needing to go overseas to do their terminal qualifications, away from family and friends, the added stress that puts on to them, before going back about the differences that she experiences in working in Wales as well, but also then going back and what she's doing in improving Nigerian midwifery.

Speaker 1: 23:41

And then episode 67 got an insight into the Royal College of Midwifery in the UK's role in research and their focus on research by talking to the two lead research gurus there, jude Field and Jenny Cunningham, and then looking at what they've done in putting up the research hub. You can put up your digital thesis there, you can put up the research map that is there as well, a lot of the local stuff that they are doing for members in the UK, but also allowing access to some courses as well, to international courses on research. Looking to the future, they're currently doing an exploration of where people think priorities should be for research and that's kind of been a study that they've been intended for and that will be coming out over the next 12 months, I think doing that. So that was an interesting conversation of looking at where they're going to do, because it is very much looking at the future and what people want. And we also had, at the time that we recorded that, which was a couple of months ago, they had a midwifery student on placement with them, so we got to listen to her and her experiences and it was only like day one or day two for her to be there, but looking at it from a student, undergraduate student, midwife and looking at where she was going as well.

Speaker 1: 25:09

And then our last episode for the year before this wrap up was number 68. And that was when we went back and spoke to Laura and Tanya Kappa and Rebecca Schlafer and we're looking about the origins of Pippi. So pregnancy in prison, international and looking at what the changes are, what the challenges are, what the needs are across three countries. So looking at from the UK, looking from Australia and from the US, in particular the middle, and it was interesting having that conversation and this is something that I think, if time permits, in 2024 and beyond.

Speaker 1: 25:58

I met so many amazing midwives in the different conferences I'm doing, and especially the ICM, who don't have terminal qualifications but we're doing some amazing things. So there's a few people that I want to chat to a little bit more to find out because they're path forges. So once again they have, they're the first at doing what they want to do. Once again they have, they're the first at doing what they're doing, or the near first at doing what they're doing, and I think their stories are too valuable a lesson for us to not hear. So when time permits next year there might be some a little bit of an extra ones that kind of go into the episodes as well as still talking to midwives and birthing professionals who have got their terminal kind of degree, so that's their PhD, their ProfDoc or their DNP, or even in America they're now introducing a DNP, so a Doctor of Midwifery Practice, and so looking and exploring what the differences for them are. So that's once again, in between having a full-time job and doing my own PhD.

Speaker 1: 27:04

I would like to do that I'm also going to put out my yearly call for names of people that you want to hear from.

Speaker 1: 27:13

So, whichever way whether you want to put it on Twitter or X or on Instagram, or on LinkedIn or email then get in contact with me and tell me who you want to hear, and I will approach them throughout next year as well. I've still got a few more people I didn't get through this year that I'll approach for next year. I want to thank you very much for your continued support, for your listening, for your sharing of information, feedback. I'm always open to feedback of what you want to hear or who you want to hear. Be safe, and here's to a less challenging 2024, but an entertaining one. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us today. You'll find all the links on Twitter, instagram and on the podcast website. If you are a midwife and you would like to share your research, your postgraduate studies or even the quality improvement projects you are doing now, then email me at throughthepinardcom, send me a tweet or send me a DM.