I really enjoy Eugene Declercq’s presentations and just found this fantastic YouTube version of his popular myth-busting talk “Birth by the Numbers: Myth and Reality Concerning US Cesareans.”
Great take home message… CS patterns are a cultural phenomenon, not the result of increasing risks of childbirth.
Enjoy!
**Here is the notice for Dr. Downe’s upcoming lecture**
UBC Midwifery is pleased to invite you to join us for the inaugural Elaine Carty Visiting Scholar Public Lecture with Dr. Soo Downe (PhD, RM, OBE, Professor, University of Central Lancashire).
Normalizing Birth: Is the way we do birth bankrupting future generations?
“What has always fascinated me is the sense that the process of childbirth is far more than just getting a baby out. It is something that links us back through all our ancestors, and into the future, and we are all (mother, father, baby) irrevocably marked by it. It is also one of the few experiences left in society which, when undertaken physiologically, is ultimately unpredictable and uncontrollable and, as a consequence, deeply emotional. It takes all those who experience it authentically to the very edge of their capacity to cope, and it says to them, you can do this and if you can do this, you can do anything. Getting it right is therefore profoundly important for the wellbeing of families, and for future generations. While I have always believed this intuitively, recent exciting evidence from epigenetics seems to suggest that there is biological evidence for the impact of labour and birth on way genes might be expressed for the child, and for their adulthood, and then their own children in the future. So, for all these reasons, the normal birth agenda is really important to me.” Dr. Soo Downe
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
CFRI Chan Auditorium, BC Women¹s Hospital
4500 Oak Street, Vancouver
6pm Doors open and reception
7pm Lecture
Please RSVP to Karen Gelb at karen.gelb@midwifery.ubc.ca or 604-822-7998.
Last year I asked my Facebook colleagues for suggestions of resources on: a) how to write a thesis effectively, and b) how to balance parenthood and academia. Here are the suggestions I received:
Parenthood & Academia
Academic Writing
Please add further suggestions in the comments!
For those of you interested in applying to the CIHR ICS competition, here is the link and some more information:
Institute Community Support Grants and Awards (2014-2015)
Following our helpful discussion today of odds ratios vs risk ratios, here are the two articles that Kristi provided:
Some of us are engaged in research that aims to help patients, providers, and decision makers make good decisions in maternity care. With patients, this means helping them make choices that are informed by best clinical evidence, personal values, and in the context of available resources. In a recent blog by Healthy Debate, “Decision aids: why hasn’t this proven, patient-centred practice caught on?”, the authors discuss the role of decision aids in helping patients make more informed decisions about their care. My thesis explores decision-making for vaginal birth after caesarean, so the questions posed in the article are of great relevance and interest to me.
Decision aids have been developed in maternity care for a range of preference-sensitive decisions, from choice of epidural, to prenatal genetic screening, to external cephalic version for breech presentation. While these tools have been shown to increase knowledge and help patients gain clarity about what matters to them, they have not been widely implemented. The article provides a good overview of why there has been limited uptake of decision aids.
At a previous Normal Birth meeting, Patti offered the following NICE guidelines for discussion: Intrapartum care: Care of healthy women and their babies during childbirth. These guidelines were just issued in December 2014 and provide updated evidence on management of normal birth from the previous 2007 guidelines. Recommendations include that women receive midwife-led care and that low risk multiparous women be offered home birth.