Dear Trish,
Thank you for your comments and yes I begrudgingly joined the ACMI. To
eventually gain an accreditation only available to people who pay the
money..
Why does the ACMI come in for so much criticism.
Well coming from foreign shores one can only guess? I attended a
local ACMI meeting and was familiarised to the forwarding and seconding
and commitee and executive and sub commitee and regional and state
branch and it went on.......... and on.
Why is it that midwives are not joining in throng to the ACMI well
because it is seen as being an obstetricians pet dog and whether this
be justified or not it is a realistic representation of peoples views.
when reflecting on a body that appears to have no political weight.
The ACMI indeed has to battle a strong adversary. To do so it needs to
be unifying easily accesible and develop teeth. Currently I am trying
to learn the history of Australian Midwifery to see how such a pitiful
situation could have been tolerated.
The ACMI has existed in the horror of maternity care in AUSTRALIA and
has nurtured the demon by developing tough gums instead of teeth.
Where is the ACMI's evidence of community centered approach to
maternity services, where are womens views acted on? How hard is it to
have your views heard within the ACMI.
A friend of mine reminds me that change begins with ME! and it is true.
I do shout and I do scream, I have just returned from the Homebirth
Conference in Byron and I felt force and energy, not the pat pat on the
back of self appreciation associated with so many other bodily
organizations, but a real sense of unifying purpose friendship and
support. We can move mountains and will rather than try to talk nicely
to the mountain in the vain hope it will develop a conscience.
It has to be said to that a number of midwives at the conference who
had worked hard in the ACMI and as midwives had been let down by the
ACMI when the challange of our common enemy chose to individualise.
Ask why there is directions afoot not to invite Maggie Lecky-Thompson
to speak at the National in QLD. As communicated to me by a horrified
member. She may be de-registered but are we to deny her passion, her
skills her experience.
I am not feeling particularily eloquent as I am rushing to see a lady
who had a beautiful birth on thursday. A lady who thanks not the ACMI
or the governments blinkered approach to maternity vision but the
people who believe in her as a women and individual that chose her
birth
Perhaps I am shouting at the wrong organisation but I think not. I am
vocal to all who do diservice whilst applauding themselves as doing the
best they can when so evidently they are not!!!!!! Be that government,
hospitals practitioners or indeed the ACMI.
Thank you
With repect and love
nigel
--- Trish David <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dear Nigel,
>
> If you look at ACMI position statements, press
> releases, letters to
> politicians, etc, in fact any correspondence
> (action) it has engaged in at
> State and National level you will see that it does
> promote recognition of
> midwifery as distinct from nursing and distinct from
> medicine. As to
> ineffectual, prove it. Just because certain changes
> have not occurred,
> doesnt mean something is ineffectual. It just means
> the resistance is too
> strong. If all midwives were active members of
> ACMI, and if ALL WOMEN
> really did feel passionate and want what we say they
> want, and were willing
> and able to act, there would be no resistance at
> all.
>
> Now, are you a member of ACMI? Are you active at a
> local level? If not,
> become so. If you feel passionately, let your local
> rep/branch know and be
> prepared to act with them. A non-member cannot move
> anything.
>
> Now, as to having things in common...many issues we
> share with women have
> no relevance to nursing, but eschewing an alliance
> that has been
> productive, and that many, many midwives still
> cherish, even though it is
> not without its disadvantages would be foolhardy.
> Why cut our noses off to
> spite our faces??? (And see Nicky Leap's paper from
> the recent ACMI
> Conference for a rational and lively critique of the
> definition of a
> midwife in relation to nursing, so that rhetoric and
> rubric can be
> idnetified where it exists.) I say, make strategic
> alliances, whilst
> maintaining an identity, where and when they serve
> our best interests as a
> woman centred profession. After all most nurses
> (96%) are women and will
> need our services at some time.
>
> That doesn't mean we are to be nurses, just as
> electricians are not
> plumbers. But the electricians and plumbers will
> band together for the
> benefit of both trades. Interestingly, you have
> chosen for your metaphor
> the two trades within the building area that have
> achieved a high degree of
> occupational closure (separate identity enshrined in
> law)!!! And yet this
> is precisely what many criticise midwifery (through
> ACMI) of trying to
> perpetuate.
>
> That's all for now.
>
> Trish
> --
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===
>From Cathy Bock and Nigel Duncan.
at
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