Namaste! Oli otya! Jambo! Hello!
Welcome to the blog for the 2018 UBC Midwifery Global Citizenship cohort. This blog will follow 9 third year UBC midwifery students on their global placements in Nepal and Uganda.
The UBC Midwifery Programme has worked hard to develop and nurture clinical care and research relationships with both Uganda and Nepal. These working relationships make it possible for UBC midwifery students to travel to these countries to gain experience working globally and in low resource settings.
The goals for the students participating in the global placements are to learn about health care systems in developing countries, and to learn how to work and collaborate with midwives and doctors in low resource settings.
While in Nepal and Uganda we will attend births and witness the ways birth in low resource settings are addressed by the health care workers. We hope that the development of these skills will assist those of us working in rural and remote areas of BC in providing confident and competent midwifery care.
In preparation for out global placements we all enrolled in Midwifery 360: Global Maternal Infant Care this past January. It was amazing! We learned so much.
In MIDW 360,
- We focussed on the worldwide causes of maternal, newborn and infant mortality and morbidity.
- We learned more about economic and social determinants of health and applied them to concepts of reproductive health care in Canada and other countries.
- We synthesized our knowledge of broad public health measures in an attempt to improve health in childbearing people in Canada and resource poor countries.
- We learned different approaches that have been used to prevent, identify and treat diseases and conditions related to maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality.
We also learned:
- Helping Babies Breath
- Kangaroo Mother Care
- About the 3 Delays
- How to develop teaching and informational handouts for folks who do not speak English or are not literate.
- and so much more
Since completing Midwifery 360 at the end of January, we have all been in a variety of midwifery and interprofessional placements in addition to attending packing days, getting up-to-date on our immunizations, applying for bursaries, and preparing to be away from our families for 7 weeks.
The students going to Nepal will be there from April 3 to May 19th. The Ugandan cohort will be at their sites in Uganda from May 19 to June 30th.
Please join us on this amazing experience!
Jenny - Nepal Cohort
