Chicago Birth Summit ~ Part 2

The chairs and tables were configured in a horseshoe so everyone could see and be seen.

Slowly but surely leader/representatives from 12 major nursing, midwifery, childbirth education and doula organizations came into the room. Some set up their laptops and we even had one organization attend via Skype then cell phone. The initial atmosphere was hesitant but soon the energy level rose!

Complete with two scribes in order to get a great set of minutes, the meeting began promptly at 9 am. The meeting opened with introductions of all of the attendees and their organizations and what their organizations are doing to work toward normal birth.

We spoke about the current obstacles to evidence-based maternity care. The obstacles included hospital administrations that do not have policies that are evidence-based; nursing students and residents are not taught techniques for normal birth so that may be a lost art in the not-to-distant future. We also talked about the significant rise in interventions, yet our ranking in the infant morbidity/mortality and maternal mortality/morbidity is still well below what it should be.

This discussion soon lead to the formulation of potential collaborative areas for the 12 organizations:

1. This coalition going to ACOG to exhibit
2. Coalition for going to Washington to influence Obama Health Policy
3. Resolution written about AMA/ACOG
4. Coalition going to AWHONN Leadership in Jan
5. Rapid Response Team – funneled to CIMS - we need to all join CIMS as individuals/groups
6. Recipe for accessing NSG schools & residency programs for normal birth

We then broke into small groups to tackle these potential collaborative areas and used graffiti sheets to facilitate the process.

The bottom line is that the group made a promise that all would join CIMS as participating organizations and that we would formulate a Yahoo Group to stay in touch. We appointed those who would talke the lead on the various collaborative areas.

CIMS will be the umbrella underwhich this coalition or task force will function, provided they want us :) Each mini-group has a lead person who will report to the group and also to CIMS.

One of the BEST things to come of this Summit was the formation of a Rapid Response Team to regularly disseminate positive research about normal birth AND to dispell any future proclamations/resolutions that are not evidence based. :)

I was so very excited about the energy, dedication and enthusiasm everyone had about the energy in the room. Some 12 individuals who collectively represented well over 41,820+ professionals.

Very exciting and not an experience I will forget any time soon!