Sage Midwife coaching has launched a new course for Midwives Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
Good record keeping is a fundamental part of provision of safe, women centred midwifery care. As Midwives we all know this – that we must record care provision, our observations and interpretation, information provided to wahine and whanau, and midwifery advice and care provided. We all learnt about the importance of good documentation and record keeping as part of learning to be a midwife. As student midwives we keenly absorbed as much as we could on clinical placements. The documentation practices of midwives are as different as the midwives themselves. So, we each developed our own style and practices.
I’ve reviewed a lot of midwifery documentation in my work as an external clinical advisor for ACC, the coroner, DHBs and Midwifery Council. I’ve seen amazing records and also seen poor midwifery records and documentation. Poor documentation lacks important details, clarity or completeness. Poor documentation fails to tell the story of midwifery care provided or the woman/birthing person’s story.
So, how to write a course to support midwives to write amazing midwifery records?
First, we agreed on the name of the course and the course objectives.
Our course name, “Meeting Midwifery Records Requirements” reflects that we are really keen to make sure that the course covers not just documentation of clinical care, but takes into account the wider requirements for midwifery documentation and record keeping. And that the course was totally relevant for midwives in practice.
Next, we took a deep dive into the New Zealand legislation to really understand what provides (and interestingly what doesn’t) specific requirements for Health Practitioners record keeping, and specifically for midwives. What do Midwives need to write? What provides details and guidance for midwifery documentation practice?
We made sure that what we share is focused on what Midwives need to know and what they need to do in practice. We found some amazing Aotearoa-based resources on midwifery record keeping and we have woven these into the course materials, exercises and handouts.
There has been refining and a lot of back and forth, writing, and re-writing. Plus, review of the course flow and materials to really make sure that we are using modern teaching and active learning strategies.
Then, there was Zoom! Learning how to best use Zoom as a teaching and learning tool. Thanks to our willing family and friends (thanks whanau), we have been able to have a few practice sessions to further developed the course.
Piece by piece we have developed and crafted what we think will be a great course for Midwives. Now that we have received course approval from Midwifery Council, we are ready to go live with launching the very first, Meeting Midwifery Records Requirements course on 14th September!
Check out the "Courses" section of the site and book your place today!