Day One #SafeBirths – Bettina

The Women and Children’s Clinic – A Midwife’s Perspective Bettina is a volunteer midwife at the Women and Children’s Clinic in our London Clinic. She is a qualified midwife and has been with Doctors of the World for a number of years. As a midwife the fact that the simplest definition of the word is to be “with woman” means a lot to me. It was a key factor in my decision to choose midwifery as a career and to this day prospective midwifery students will probably not get a training place unless they mention “women-centered care” a couple of times during their interview. I started working as a midwife full of enthusiasm but after fourteen years in a maternity setting, I was exhausted and disillusioned. I found it increasingly difficult to simultaneously support two (and sometimes three) women in labor or feel I had given adequate care on the postnatal ward which, when full, housed 24 new mothers and an equal number of babies. I bailed out, did a Master’s degree and then worked as a research assistant in a teaching hospital. However, something stopped me from relinquishing my midwifery qualification and I continued with the mandatory training and the required number of practice hours, working part-time as a midwife in the antenatal clinic. I had been volunteering with Doctors of the World for some years when in 2014 we started the Women and Children’s Clinic to respond to the large number of pregnant women and families arri...
Source: Doctors of the World News - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Uncategorised #SafeBirths Source Type: news