Association of Ontario Midwives 2010/2011 Annual Report

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Beliefs and Values Mission Statement The Association of Ontario Midwives represents and advocates on behalf of Registered Midwives. The AOM promotes the profession of midwifery in Ontario. We are committed to the growth of the profession and supporting midwives in the provision of optimal midwifery care that is responsive to the needs of women and their infants. Vision Statement Midwifery is central to the provision of maternal and newborn care in Ontario. Midwives participate fully in planning and policy development at all levels of the health care system. Beliefs and Values The Association of Ontario Midwives believes that: 1. Pregnancy and childbirth are a profound time in a woman’s life, imbued with a variety of personal and cultural meanings, and are best approached in a non-authoritarian manner, providing choice of birthplace, continuity of care, informed choice and recognizing the woman as the primary decision-maker. 2. Midwives are experts in the provision of primary care for women anticipating normal, low-risk pregnancy and birth. 3. Valuing and respecting diversity is integral to the provision of midwifery care. 4. Effective midwifery care is based on the best available evidence combined with knowledge of a woman and her circumstances. 5. Midwifery care must be accessible and fully funded for women in Ontario. 6. Midwifery should have a central role in the development and implementation of a Health Human Resource Plan for maternal and newborn care in Ontario. 7. We must value and embrace the principles of dignity and diversity in every facet of the work we undertake. 8. We must be member focused and work to establish accessible, appropriate and responsive services and support, which meet the needs of the membership, and the community at large. 9. We must advocate for members’ rights to working conditions that promote longterm career satisfaction. 10. We promote the profession and enhance the potential of midwifery to contribute to the well-being of society. On the cover Clockwise from top left: • Clients Annamaria Rocchetta and Urszula May with baby Nico • Clients Jenny Young and Hannifah Nakimera pose for the birth centres campaign • Jasmin Tecson, RM, with clients Anita and Scott Craig • Cynthia Rebong , RM, with client Tara Pouyat Thank you to the clients, midwives and practices who participated in photo shoots this year and in years past. 600 500 400 300 200 100 Number of Midwives from 1994-2010 New practices in 2010 • The Midwife Clinic: Etobicoke • Orillia Midwives: Orillia • Temiskaming Midwifery Practice: North Cobalt 0 Year 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2 2010/2011 Annual Report
Message from the President Midwives: bringing value to women and the health care system An excerpt from the Opening Ceremonies and Conference Opening at the 2011 Conference, Delivering Change: Strengthening Maternal-Newborn Care in Ontario Katrina Kilroy, RM AOM President “Midwives have the right to regular negotiations, fair compensation and appropriate stewardship...” Midwives make a profound impact not only on the women and families we care for but on the health care system as a whole. A number of months ago, an independent third-party report spoke of the extraordinary value of Ontario midwives. It spoke about the ways in which, while midwives have worked to build a strong midwifery system in Ontario, our own need for fair and equitable compensation and regular negotiations has been neglected. We have built an outstanding model of midwifery care in Ontario. It is our responsibility to provide stewardship for this model. That means booking women in a timely way during the first trimester, taking time to provide quality care that good outcomes grow out of, offering women comprehensive care by doing our own lab work, offering prenatal home visits for all clients regardless of planned place of birth, enabling women to leave hospital directly from the labour floor (even if it means more time from the midwife and more work when out of hospital testing is required), and by conducting primary care assessments of women calling with concerns such as to query preterm labour or reduced fetal movement. It means respecting and caring for each other within the complex dynamics of a midwifery practice. Midwifery in Ontario has been built by hard-working midwives with a commitment to individualized care and care in the community and it’s where our strength lies. It’s why healthy pregnant women need to be cared for by midwives. It’s our responsibility and our privilege to provide this level of care, this quality of care and this cost-effectiveness of care to the women of Ontario and to the health care system. But midwives are not being paid fairly in Ontario and have not been paid fairly since 1995. Without proper compensation, midwives may be getting the message that the Ministry of Health no longer wants to pay for this quality of care and the good outcomes that go with it; that it is not valued within the health care system. In Ontario, we run the entire midwifery system and we need more support to do so. We need fair and timely budget approvals, we need infrastructure support such as birth centres, clinical midwifery specialists and programs to support midwives at the beginning and the end of their careers, we need support for research on midwifery and research conducted by midwives. We need appropriate funding for IT, we need support for translation and interpretation, we need to be paid as preceptors equally to others in the system and certainly at a rate better than what we started with all those years ago in 1994. We need to ensure that we can access hospital privileges and be able to maintain primary care when our clients need epidurals, inductions or augmentations and most importantly we need a dependable negotiations process and we need pay equity. By allowing midwives’ compensation to deteriorate and not keep pace with that of other health care workers, it appears that in spite of our excellent outcomes and satisfaction rates, we are not valued the way we were in 1994. That needs to change. Midwives have the right to regular negotiations, fair compensation and appropriate stewardship from a Ministry that recognizes the contributions midwives make to the health of women and babies in this province. Association of Ontario Midwives 3
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Association of Ontario Midwives 2010/2011 Annual Report

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