Alberta midwives to establish professional college in 2013

 EDMONTON – Alberta’s midwives will have their own independent professional college in the new year, a final step into mainstream medicine.

Only a handful of midwives practised in Alberta 20 years ago, some doing home births. They were registered but working without medicare funding.

Today there are more than 70 working in the province, including about 25 in the Edmonton area, which is a large enough group to set up a college with its own disciplinary procedures, Health Minister Fred Horne said.

“I really congratulate them, this is an important step,” he said. “Midwives are part of the team and today’s medicine is all about working in teams.”

Joanna Greenhalgh, spokeswoman for the Alberta Association of Midwives, said the group is very pleased with the emergence of the college. She characterized it as a sign of the importance of midwifery and the profession’s commitment to public safety and standards.

In 2009, midwifery services were funded by provincial medicare and given full hospital access. The move was important to allow midwives to offer birthing services in a variety of sites, she said.

It’s also important “to establish good (relations) with doctors and nurses,” she said.

Midwives deliver about two per cent of the babies in Alberta, the association said. About 50 per cent of those births attended by midwives occur in hospitals.

Due to the large size of medical practices today, women cannot always be sure their own doctor will be able to attend a birth, Greenhalgh said.

That makes a midwife a more attractive option. They practise with only one other partner on each expectant mother, and college regulations will limit the profession to teams of four who can ” share care” to ensure women they will know their midwife.

Mount Royal University in Calgary offers a four-year bachelor’s degree in midwifery.

The new college body will continue to have oversight from the Health Disciplines Board for a period of time before full independence.

Seven provinces and two territories offer publicly funded midwifery, including B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nunavut, Nova Scotia, and the Northwest Territories.

In 2012, the province authorized an independent college for naturopaths, though it did not agree to fund treatment.