Purpose of the Symposium
1) Discuss the benefits of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI) for hospitals, clinics, mothers, infants, and clinicians
2) Provide a forum for discussion among nurses, doctors, doulas, childbirth educators, midwives, administrators and others on the challenges and opportunities of implementing mother-friendly care in the clinical or hospital setting.
3) Provide a forum for dissemination of evidence-based best practices for maternity care.
4) Support clinics, hospitals and community-based programs in developing plans of action to shift the thinking in their organizations towards mother-friendly care and develop multidisciplinary coordinated networks of maternity care providers.
5) Practitioners and students of maternity care will obtain an objective understanding of the collision of worldviews and belief systems when the medical and midwifery models of maternity care intersect.
6) Participants will describe how the perinatal community as a whole can best collaborate to provide optimal care for mothers and infants based on the principals of the MFCI and the evidence-based practices available as outlined in the 10 steps of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI).
Principles of the MFCI are:This session will be broadcast as a live-streamed simultaneous webinar. Please go to: https://2015-mfci-symposium-virtual-meeting.eventbrite.com to register.
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
Many organizations and individuals are involved in maternity care advocacy in the United States. The US has some of the worst maternal outcomes among developed countries, with African American women at three-four fold greater risk of dying than women of other racial-ethnic groups, the widest public health disparity. Subsequent calls for an organized, national response to worsening maternal outcomes have resulted in coordinated efforts including actions to address patient safety in maternity care, increase state maternal mortality reviews, and other private and public investment in maternal health initiatives. Grassroots activists and childbirth advocacy organizations have long been promoting quality, respectful, transparent & evidence-based maternity practices using a rights-based framework of women-centered care. How are these groups & efforts aligned? Where do they diverge? This presentation will provide an overview of historical and recent initiatives to improve maternity care and outcomes. It outlines a vision of maternal quality improvement that balances awareness and responsiveness to “risk” (the measurement, analysis, and prevention of maternal mortality and morbidity) with meaningful efforts to support the “normality” of physiologic birth among low-risk women in hospital settings.
