Turkey Keen to Hear About NZs Successful Midwifery-Led Model

Turkey Keen to Hear About NZ’s Successful Midwifery-Led Model

New Zealand College of Midwives Chief Executive, Karen Guilliland, leaves on Wednesday for Ankara, Turkey where she will address an academic audience on the world leading maternity system in NZ.

Invited by the Midwives Association of Turkey and funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey and Ankara University, Mrs Guilliland will speak about the positive outcomes for women and babies, resulting from the midwifery-led model of care, and will also meet with Turkish Ministry of Health officials.

“The maternity providers and officials are particularly interested in the rural midwifery service and the continuity of care that the New Zealand maternity service provides,” she says. “Midwives in Turkey and elsewhere in the OECD are very focused on strengthening midwifery regulation, education and practice in a similar way we have in New Zealand.”

The NZCOM Chief Executive says the Ministry of Health report on maternity care – Report on Maternity 2012 – http://www.health.govt.nz/publication/report-maternity-2012 released mid last month confirms the robustness of the midwifery led maternity system in New Zealand as well as the high quality of care New Zealand women receive during their pregnancy and birth.

“More women in New Zealand are registering earlier in pregnancy with a midwife, accessing high quality, personalised care, information and advice during pregnancy through the labour and birth, and into the early weeks of parenting,” she says. “This is excellent news for our wider community as it results in a longer period of continuity of care – one of the cornerstones of our midwifery led maternity system and something I will be positively reinforcing in Turkey.”

Mrs Guilliland says that while eyes around the world recently focused on Gallipoli, and rightly so, we should not forget that life goes on during both war and peace.

“Many women and babies faced frightening conditions during the war and Turkish midwives would have been under great duress to ensure the provision of birthing services were sustained,” she says. “It is a privilege to be able to share information and solutions to common problems with the Turkish midwifery sector and women groups.”

ENDS

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