Maternal and Child Health Initiative (MCHI) workshops and research

The Maternal and Child Health Initiative (MCHI) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) held its first workshop for 2015 at Sogeri, Central Province, PNG at the end of March. The MCHI is funded by Australian Aid. This workshop is the fourth for Phase II of the Initiative, and focussed on antenatal care and strengthening competency assessment skills in midwifery education. Over 20 national educators, clinicians and leaders attended the three day workshop, along with representatives from the MCHI team including four clinical midwifery facilitators, one clinical midwifery educator and one obstetrician. Ms Christine Sturrock from DFAT and Mrs Mary Kililo from the National Department of Health PNG officially opened the workshop which was led by the five PNG midwifery course coordinators with support from Professor Caroline Homer, Ms Alison Moores and Ms Amanda Neill from the WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Development at University of Technology Sydney (WHO CC UTS). Initial feedback from workshop participants was extremely positive and further workshops are planned for later in the year.

MCHI workshop participants, April 2015

Participants learned:

• What competency standards are and why we need them
• Essential skills for midwifery educators of teaching, assessing and giving feedback. 
• Communication, history taking with an adolescent woman
• Advising and counselling women living in remote areas on how to develop a birth preparedness plan
• Providing antenatal care, advice and treatment and referral for a woman presenting with signs suggesting HIV infection. 
• Recognising, responding and providing ongoing management for a woman who presents in late pregnancy with no fetal movements or heart sounds

Work on the MCHI’s longitudinal study which is tracking midwifery workforce participation trends and graduate influences is progressing well with over 140 midwifery graduates from the 2012 and 2013 cohorts surveyed to date. The study is being led by Ms Alison Moores and Professor Caroline Homer at WHO CC UTS, with support and involvement from the Research Team in PNG.  Two members of this Team - Dr Nancy Buasi and Ms Paula Puawe – have assisted with data collection by conducting surveys and focus groups with midwifery students.  By the end of data collection, more than 80% of the target midwifery graduates were contacted and surveyed.  Final study results will be available at the end of 2015.