I am happy to be back to the role of Vic Branch Representative, filling Bronny's shoes as she needed to step down due to personal and work reasons.

Vic Branch has been busy organising dates for 2012, including dates for two training courses and Study days.  Don’t forget to check the calendar on the website.

We already have 5 participants booked into our May training course.

We held a movie night at the Royal Women's hospital showing 'The Face of Birth'.  It was well attended by about 30 participants, with Rhea Dempsey introducing the documentary and then leading the discussion afterwards.  The discussion was interesting but all lead to the same conclusion -  that women should have a choice re all their care, but most aren't given real options.  Most midwives/educators present felt women were not given enough information by their main care giver to make informed choices.  We did have an OB present who was trained overseas and they do see the style of training here does lead to high risk care as opposed to seeing pregnancy as normal.  As to how to deal with this, it's about training all maternity health care workers about normality, choices (medical and complimentary) and working together with the women.  Obviously easier said than done.

Melanie Cane

Vic Branch Representative