Midwives of the world at the ICM

Even while I was waiting for the bus to take me to the airport to fly home after the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) 40th Triennial Congress in Prague (June 2014), the conversations continued. Ranging from politics to clinical care; discussions about the best way of conducting intermittent auscultation, to thinking about how a midwife might make a change to the highly invasive routine care in second stage of labour in her country, routine electronic fetal monitoring, compulsory supine position in bed, and the overuse of syntocinon augmentation.

I first attended an ICM Triennial Congress in 1986. I have always been humbled by the sheer courage and altruism of many of the midwives attending, who work powerfully against the odds to improve the quality of maternity care. The membership of midwifery associations in the ICM is important to the recognition of midwifery as a profession in regulation and education and with governments. Because of this, midwifery associations will go to great lengths to meet the criteria for membership and raise the fees required.