Midwives, check your white privilege


The Code of Conduct from the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia has some interesting clauses regarding nurses acknowledging our colonialist past and check our white privelege. Who knew that bringing people into the world requires nurses to undergo such PC nonsense and reeducation on something they do out of love and passion? What happened in all the child births to date that required professionals to pass identity criteria before ‘helping’? What if the selected midwife that ticks the boxes comes down with the flu and the patient goes into emergency labour due to an unforeseen complication? Does the baby’s life or the identity of the replacement midwife take priority? See below.

3.2 ​Culturally safe and respectful practice

Culturally safe and respectful practice requires having knowledge of how a midwife’s own culture, values, attitudes, assumptions and beliefs influence their interactions with women and families, the community and colleagues. To ensure culturally safe and respectful practice, midwives must:

a. understand that only the woman and/or her family can determine whether or not care is culturally safe and respectful.

b. respect diverse cultures, beliefs, gender identities, sexualities and experiences of women and others, including among team members.

c. acknowledge the social, economic, cultural, historic and behavioural factors influencing health, both at the individual, community and population levels.

d. adopt practices that respect diversity, avoid bias, discrimination and racism, and challenge belief based upon assumption (for example, based on gender, disability, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, age or political beliefs).

e. support an inclusive environment for the safety and security of the individual woman and her family and/or significant others, and

f. create a positive, culturally safe work environment through role modelling, and supporting the rights, dignity and safety of others, including women and colleagues.

When my second daughter was born not for one second did the midwife’s identity play any role. Yet somehow we must now indoctrinate PC lunacy inside our hospitals. Surely safe deliveries are 100% of the mission. Not submitting to the whims of someone who subjectively sees themselves as something they’re not. Why can’t we just evaluate nurses on their abilities rather than search for ways to make them tick all the identity boxes to fit a structure that has not been required for millennia?