e-magazin chapther in the twinning up north project. Enhancing leadership in midwifery curriculum on promoting normal birth.

Description

This e-magazine tells the story of a journey of a three-year twinning collaboration between twenty eight midwives, fourteen from Iceland and fourteen from the Netherlands. These midwife ‘twins’ worked together to generate positive change in maternity care in their respective countries. They did this by strengthening and profiling midwives and midwifery as key to humanising and optimising pregnancy and birth for women and their babies and families.

The current curriculum for midwifery contains all the elements needed to enable someone to have knowledge on midwifery, but one thing that can be enhanced is- leadership skills. A new education module can be the first step in a domino effect that will increase the midwives‘ leadership skills and influence. It will empower women and their families, and promote normality in childbirth.

The first step of this project was conducting a qualitative research in the Netherlands and Iceland to find out what they felt was missing from the midwifery curriculum. Based on the findings of this research, the team developed a new educational midwifery module on enhancing leadership on promoting normal birth. This new education module was tested in both countries on a pilot basis to see how it works. Changes and adjustments were being made in this module continuously for its perfection. Currently, the midwifery schools who were involved are in the process of implementing the whole module or a part of the module where it fits best in their pre-existing curriculum.