I would like to thank the Iolanthe Midwifery Trust for granting me funding of £1000, which I utilised to partially fund a Physiological breech study day.
I contacted Dr. Shawn Walker who is a senior researcher and internationally renowned expert on vaginal breech births. We started planning the study day, by looking at possible dates, as I checked the flow of the midwifery students at the University of the West of Scotland(UWS) and searched for dates when students have more opportunity to attend the study day.
I negotiated with the Student Union representative to hold the session on the Lanarkshire campus, at UWS, which helped to reduce the cost as the room was given free of charge. Finally, we agreed with Dr. Shawn Walker that 20th January would suit all, she asked me if I could contact the Health Boards in Scotland and promote the event to midwives, obstetricians, and paramedics, which I did with the assistance of Sheona Brown.
My intention was for as many as possible students to attend, so I asked Dr. Shawn Walker if my award could pay half of the price of the student tickets and the other half to be paid by students, to which she agreed.
This allowed me to use all the £1000 from the award, towards paying off half of the price of the tickets for 40 students, as the full price of the student ticket was £50 per student. I created a poster to promote the event on the Aula site, which is our Virtual Learning Platform used for all years-including BSc and MSc student midwives of UWS and the social media of the UWS Midwifery Society.
The student tickets sold out very quickly. I recognised that there was a demand for this training, and therefore I decided to raise money by hiking mountains, for additional students to be able to attend the study day.
I managed to raise £100, which was doubled by the Student Union of UWS and assisted 8 additional student midwives to buy half-price tickets and attend the training.
The Study day was well received, 44 student midwives, 22 midwives, and 2 obstetricians were amazed by the amount of research information that was presented by Dr. Shawn Walker, Kate Stinger, and Lucy Williamson, who are all part of the OptiBreach team.
I felt happy and satisfied as the information that was presented, aligned with my belief, that women are capable of birthing their babies vaginally if their babies are in breech presentation. The attendees learned what are the signs that suggest that babies need assistance, and new skills on how to assist babies during vaginal birth.
Further, the Algorithm that the OptiBreech guideline recommends, was broken down clearly outlining when interventions are required, which differs from what was previously used. The study session highlighted the importance of retraining to disregard the previously cited theory of “hands off breech”.
All this is valuable information that all health professionals could use in practice, most importantly they will support women’s and families informed choices of mode of birth, as all the teaching was based on evidence.
The students' feedback was fantastic, they were overwhelmed with the information but at the same time very happy they attended. Unfortunately I did not capture the qualified midwives feedback after the event; when planning future events I will ensure to capture feedback from all attendees.
This study day meant a lot to me, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of participants that attended, and I managed to speak to some midwives from different health boards and the 2 obstetricians. There were student midwives from the first second and third year of the midwifery course and midwifery lecturers. All attendees received a certificate of attendance and access to the Optibreech online self-directed study materials.
I am planning to use the £500 from my Mary Cronk award to travel and stay in London in July/August and work on a small research project with Dr. Shawn Walker.
