The Order of Midwives publishes a White Paper with 12 proposals to promote their role in supporting and improving the health of women and their children.
In view of the presidential and legislative elections of 2017, the National Council of the Order of Midwives decided to challenge the candidates. For this, he publishes this Tuesday a White Paper which formulates 12 proposals intended to promote their role in taking charge of and improving the health of women and their children.
It will be hand-delivered to all the presidential candidates and their political staffs, during meetings scheduled for the first half of 2017. Entitled “Innovating for public health with midwives ”, it aims to respond to the new demographic, prevention and training challenges facing midwives in France and in Europe.
Health promotion
The bodies of the midwifery profession, for example, support the establishment of a consultation for all young people from the age of 16. It could, according to the Order, be performed by a midwife. This consultation would focus on education in sexuality and emotional life, information on contraception, associated with the prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and addictive behaviors.
As such, the Order recalls that in France, 6.7% of young people aged 12 to 17 have already had an abortion once. According to him, it is therefore also “essential to put in place actions to promote health at school and throughout the child’s school career in order to simplify and facilitate access to prevention and treatment. contraception for children and adolescents ”. And here again, midwives would have a role to play …
More room for governance
In addition, the profession wishes to strengthen the representation of midwives within governance bodies. They believe, for example, that they have their place in the implementation of the 135 regional hospital groupings (GHT) which, by including public hospitals in a shared vision of the healthcare offer, aims to involve all health professionals in order to optimally meet the needs of the population.
Also, in order to positively evolve in terms of cost-effectiveness the coordination and efficiency of care between city and hospital, the bodies of the midwifery profession propose to optimize resources by creating new midwifery coordination positions. women in hospitals, and new midwifery positions in regional health agencies (ARS) and maternal and child protection services (PMI).
Promote childbirth by a midwife
Finally, the midwives remind candidates that the technical platforms allow any liberal professional to come and work in a hospital establishment. And as such, they represent for them the opportunity to ensure the delivery of patients in a public or private maternity hospital as part of the overall support of the birth, “subject to addressing the patient to a doctor in the event of a pathological situation ”, they specify.
But because of the existing legislative and regulatory framework, this organization is too limited today. They claim, however, that “more and more women are expressing the wish to be followed and given birth by the midwife with whom they have previously constructed their birth plan”.
The National Council of the Order of Midwives therefore proposes that measures be taken by public decision-makers in order to, for liberal midwives, allow liberal midwives to access technical platforms, promote access to platforms. hospital techniques for childbirth and support their access for all women.
The fight against medical deserts
The decrease in the number of unreplaced health professionals as well as the numerous medical deserts no longer make it possible to respond effectively to the needs of the population, recalls the Order of Midwives in its White Paper. He also believes that faced with the coming decrease in the number of obstetrician gynecologists (- 6% between 2011 and 2020), the role of midwives will “necessarily be strengthened and legitimized over the next few years, both with of pregnant women than in the management of their reproductive health outside periods of pregnancy ”.
He goes on to write that midwives are therefore intended to be recognized as primary medical actors for healthy women. This new status would make it possible to refer them directly to a health professional without going through the attending physician, while allowing 100% coverage of care by Health Insurance. This direct orientation would represent a precious saving of time for the women, in particular if they are brought to suffer from a pathology requiring a rapid management. “The objective is to facilitate their monitoring and their taking by contributing to the reduction of public health expenditure”, concludes the Order. A final argument to which the presidential candidates will be, one imagines, sensitive …
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