Louise Everitt

I’m a clinical midwifery consultant at St George Hospital in Sydney and I finished a Masters of Midwifery Honours in 2013.

In my research I was investigating the removal of newborns from their mothers at birth for child protection reasons. It’s such a controversial topic – in child protection, the child is always the central focus, but in midwifery, we work from a woman-centred partnership model, which is challenging for midwives when there is a planned or unplanned removal of a baby at birth. I discovered early on that there was no research on the topic in Australia, and only limited published research in the UK, so it was a really interesting issue to explore.

I started the research degree because as a clinician I’d worked with some women whose babies were removed, and hospital staff were saying to me: ‘How can we be better prepared to support the women, the baby and the staff?’

I’d done research before, and worked on projects that had led to some changes in care, but I hadn’t ever obtained a research qualification  With the midwifery degree, I realised I could do both at once – continue doing research that I really love doing, on a topic that I was passionate about, and get a degree at the same time.

UTS has a great reputation in terms of midwifery research, and the calibre of the academics, so I just felt really comfortable. I had the opportunity to choose from a range of potential supervisors. They have recent clinical experience in midwifery as well as research experience, and understand the challenges students as well. I can’t say enough [about] how helpful they were.

I talk to friends and colleagues now about where they want to go in the future with their career. If they’re thinking they want to go into some sort of academic work or do a PhD, then this degree is a really great way to learn about research.