Response to letter to Editor: “Meeting the needs of rural and regional families: educating midwives”

Abstract

When a midwife is working as a midwife that is what she is. A midwife who is also a nurse is not working as a nurse when she cares for women with complex maternity care needs she is working as a midwife, an honour afforded to her by her midwifery education, registration and regulation. We would like to respond to the Editorial published in the previous edition of the Collegian (2012) 19 ‘Meeting the needs of rural and regional families: Educating midwives’ (pp. 187—188) and share some of our very positive experiences of Direct Entry Bachelor of Midwifery (BMid) Graduates working in some of Australia’s most remote areas in the Northern Territory (NT). A little bit about us: Rachael Lockey is a graduate of a BMid education. For the past 5 years she has worked in the NT, first for an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, Congress Alukura, and then as NT Department of Health (DH) Co-Director of Maternity Services, an NT wide role with responsibility for midwifery workforce development. Currently she is employed as a Technical Midwifery Advisor for the International Confederation of Midwives. Sue Kildea is a midwife and a nurse who has spent a large part of her career in rural and remote areas and has spent nine years as Vice President of CRANAPlus the remote health organisation. Most recently she holds a clinical chair position as the Professor of Midwifery which is a joint appointment with the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Mater Health Service. In this role she was instrumental in developing the partnership with the NT DH and Congress Alukura to commence the first cohort of students in the ACU Away from Base BMid (Indigenous) course. Her previous position was a joint appointment between Charles Darwin University (CDU) and the NT DH. The authors to whom we respond describe themselves as ‘nurses, midwives and academics practising in regional Australia’ and challenge the notion that an undergraduate BMid degree ‘alone’ will meet the health workforce needs of regional, rural and remote Australia. We agree with the authors on this point, no single profession can meet the workforce needs of regional, rural and remote Australia. However, midwives can go a long way to meet the maternity care needs of families in these areas. P i