News & Blog

The Health and Medicine Division (HMD) report, “A Framework for Educating Health Professionals to Address the Social Determinants of Health,” was the second most downloaded report published in 2016 by the HMD of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This is your opportunity to ask questions of the study committee members and discuss how they are using the report.

Thank you to everyone who joined us today for our 2017 Annual Meeting! It was wonderful to have new names and voices with us and we look forward to seeing you all more often!

Happy New Years AME members!

To start the New Year off right, and for a limited time, AME is discounting our online professional development courses–Preceptor as Educator and Best Practices.

The Association of Midwifery Educators is now inviting nominations to the Board of Directors for the 2018 election. Self-nominations are welcome. If nominating another person, please make sure they are willing to be on the ballot.

The Board of Directors of AME believes that equity is essential to midwifery education and that this principle should guide our work to fulfill our mission. Recently the board unanimously approved the following statement. We invite comment and feedback from the public which may be sent to amecoordinator@gmail.com or to any of our Board of Directors.

November 2, 2017

MANA CAM Conference

Long Beach, California

Have you heard the great news? MEAC, in collaboration with AME, has launched an exciting new program called the Midwifery Accreditation Support Track (MAST) program and we would love for you to be involved!

In October 2006, at the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) conference in Baltimore, Maryland, a group of midwifery educators and supporters came together to identify the need for and the goals of an organization that would facilitate strong connections and collaborations among midwifery educators. At this historic meeting, the Association of Midwifery Educators (AME) was born. From that time forward, AME has undertaken the mission of advancing direct-entry midwifery education by strengthening schools and supporting teachers & preceptors through connection, collaboration and coordination.

The 2018 International Congress on Integrative Medicine and Health Program Planning Committee invites you to submit a proposal for consideration. The International Congress theme “Collaboration in Action: Advancing Integrative Health through Research, Education, Clinical Practice and Policy,” reflects both the collaborative nature of the field and the scope of the scientific program.

We are very pleased to announce the availability of standalone learning modules on Foundations in Integrative Health! Individuals can sign up for any or all of the individual modules. CME, CNE, and Pharmacy CE is available for the modules. Please register by August 30 to receive the modules for FREE! The link to access the modules is here.

This is a collaborative project that the Academic Collaborative of Integrative Health participated in. AME is a proud member of the Collaborative.

Dr. Courtney Everson, who serves on the AME Board of Directors as 1st Vice President, alongside her colleagues, Drs. Bovbjerg and Cheyney, received the 2017 Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health Best Research Article Award for their published paper, “Maternal and Newborn Outcomes Following Waterbirth: The Midwives Alliance of North America Statistics Project, 2004 to 2009 Cohort.”

Announcing:

New continuing education courses from the Association of Midwifery Educators:

Many thanks to all who attended AME’s 2016 Annual Member Meeting today! For those who were unable to make it and are wondering about some of the amazing happenings here in the world of midwifery education, we have a recording of the meeting for your viewing pleasure:

Calling all AME members, midwives, midwifery educators and stakeholders!

AME members: please take a moment to consider our two nominees to the Board of Directors, and stay tuned for an elections ballot from AME. Follow each candidate’s linked name to view her CV, and then stay tuned for election ballots from AME.

Enhancing Research Literacy: A Resource for you

The Association of Midwifery Educators is soliciting nominations to the Board of Directors for two year terms starting fall 2016. Self-nominations are welcome. If nominating another person, please make sure they are willing to be placed on the ballot. Nominations will close on Monday August 22, 2016.

1.5 continuing education hours approved by MEAC for CPMs

SAVE THE DATE!

The Institute of Medicine’s Board on Global Health Presents…

A DISCUSSION OF THE IOM REPORT,
A FRAMEWORK FOR EDUCATING HEALTH PROFESSIONALS TO ADDRESS
THE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH

Educators – classroom faculty and clinical preceptors – need access to the latest information to make sure midwifery students are well prepared for clinical practice. Two new documents on waterbirth are now making their debut in the midwifery world, with a third due out this spring, which will inform midwives, educators, students and consumers.

In 1991, a small group of amazingly forward-thinking midwives and midwifery educators met in Flagstaff to talk about advancing US midwifery through education. We called ourselves the National Coalition of Midwifery Educators – NCME.

Crucial to the advancement of CPMs is educating the public and other health care providers about CPM practice. Ignorance and misconceptions about midwifery care abound in our society. Midwives need to present sessions at national, state, and local conferences that showcase how the midwives model of care can provide better outcomes and save health care dollars. Presenting at MANA will give students and graduates the experience necessary to feel comfortable presenting sessions at conferences in their communities.

Every fall midwives and birth workers gather together from all over the U.S. and beyond for three days of learning, celebration and renewal at the MANA (Midwives Alliance of North America) annual conference. This year we convened at the Albuquerque Hotel in Old Town, NM.

Being inspired by the mission of AME to support excellent in midwifery education through connection, collaboration and communication, I have been organizing and facilitating monthly conference calls between the Clinical and Practicum Directors of MEAC schools for the past year and a half. I started a committee with Mary Yglesia of Bastyr University and Sarah Carter of Midwives College of Utah to discuss this idea and come up with a plan. I contacted each MEAC school in the US to determine who would be interested. I was happy to hear that they all were, so I started by sending out a survey to each Clinical/Practicum Director to poll how they handled various aspects of their jobs.

At Bastyr University, the Department of Midwifery is very fortunate to have a great deal of resources available to us, and one of those resources is the Department of Institutional Effectiveness. With the skilled assistance of the staff in this department, we created a Midwifery Preceptor Satisfaction Survey and now have two rounds of survey results — one in 2013 and a second in 2015. The purpose of these surveys is to learn more about the motivations of our preceptors, to gauge their interest in professional development as educators and their likelihood of precepting students in the future. Additionally, we wanted to have a baseline of information from which we could measure the effects of different strategic initiatives of the Department, namely paying stipends to some preceptors and hiring a part time staff person whose role is to support the work of our preceptors and cultivate new clinical sites.

Midwifery educators can use popular journalism as a teachable moment for their students. Preparing students with the skills to respond to news--real or fake--is essential for the professional midwife.

What do we teach our students about care for transgender clients? How do we prepare them to meet the needs of all families giving birth? This Moth podcast tells the story of one transgender family's experience and how a midwife played a role in their birth.

http://themoth.org/storytellers/trystan-reese

Equity in Midwifery Education recording of September 21, 2018 presentation by Lena Soo Hee Wood, CNM on implicit bias in midwifery education.

https://youtu.be/z4PWkJf3DNU