Joanna Greenhalgh This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. www.vueweekly.com

   www.vueweekly.com/articles/def - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/8/2007   Last Visited: 3/8/2007

   Joanna Greenhalgh, one of the Stony Plain practitioners who run the Shared Care Maternity program, attends about 100 births a year in a profession that expects 15 to maintain certification. She gives families a different kind of childbirth experience.
   ...
   "BC is recruiting to get more midwives," Greenhalgh says. "The programs across the country have small admission numbers, because they're driven by student placements."
   
   With more practicing midwives, more students can be admitted and more practitioners will be available to meet the rising demand. In Alberta, the profession has been regulated but unfunded for almost 10 years and the number of midwives has increased by one.
   
   "Other provinces double their number of midwives every year," says Greenhalgh, "and it's directly related to funding."
   
   As a nurse in the Montréal Children's Hospital, Greenhalgh spent a year in the neonatal ICU, then another in pediatrics ICU. She preferred working with babies. If she was going to spend her career in the infant care field, however, she wanted to know why the kids were ending up there.
   
   "At the time, nobody was allowed in the room with a labouring woman," the midwife states. The mother was strapped to a table to deliver.
   
   "Afterwards," Greenhalgh continues, "the baby was taken to a nursery and the recovering mother could see it every four hours."
   ...
   Greenhalgh read it on her 1977 flight to the UK to receive midwife training. The British program had plenty of placement opportunities in a radically different childbirth care system.
   
   "In the UK, midwives are generally employed by the hospital or health agency. No doctor saw a woman under a midwife's care unless invited," Greenhalgh says. "In Holland, the government funds midwifery for everyone. If a woman is healthy and there are no risks, she must pay to go see a physician."
   
   The family home welcomes 70 per cent of Dutch births. In the US, each state regulates them differently, but most offer hospital-affiliated midwives. Greenhalgh came to Edmonton in 1985, after a few years in Britain and a masters in education from Toronto. She taught at the University of Alberta Hospital school of nursing while earning her own masters in nursing. The hospital school closed in 1995 and the government was considering regulating,and funding,midwifery, so she started her own practice with a partner.
   ...
   "We work with couples cooperatively," Greenhalgh says, "instead of [being] authoritarian.
   ...
   Greenhalgh has heard that male midwives, though none currently practice in Canada, are well received.
   
   "It has to be in your heart to do it," she says, "not just for a steady job. It takes about five years to establish a practice, hopefully with someone supporting you."
   
   According to Greenhalgh, a successful midwife is an intelligent problem-solver who has a strong character.