clinical practice celebrations and the Day of the Midwife and International Nurses Day and all these things we were going to do . There was going to be a lot of champagne drunk and a lot of fun . And in reality , none of that happened .
But what actually happened was better because it has highlighted the work of the health workforce . And for us , highlighted the work of nurses and midwives , and really put us front and centre and as you say , the irony of being that year and also because it was Florence Nightingale ’ s 200th birthday .
It was pretty special to be recognised in that year .
Well , I hope you did break out some champagne when you found out that you were on the list . I did drink champagne through the year , let me promise you that , but not in the way that I thought I would !
Call the midwife
Burning nurse ’ s hats , forgone champagne and post- COVID maternity care .
Caroline Homer interviewed by Conor Burke
Nursing Review caught up with another of the Aussie honourees in the 2020 List of 100 + Outstanding Nursing and Midwifery leaders , Professor Caroline Homer , the co-program director of maternal , child and adolescent health at the Burnet Institute and Visiting Professor of Midwifery at the University of Technology Sydney .
NR : How does it feel to make such a prestigious list ? CH : It ’ s a great honour . It ’ s always pretty humbling when you look at the people on that list . I ’ ve always done things with lots of colleagues . So it feels weird to be recognised individually when these things are collective exercises .
The last year has really highlighted particularly the work of nurses , but all healthcare workers . And that ’ s been a good thing . I think there ’ s been huge recognition of the work of nurses , midwives , all healthcare workers , but certainly in Australia we have 26,000 midwives who don ’ t get recognised every day for the work that they do .
I ’ ve had a very lucky career in many ways and I ’ m very grateful for the opportunities that I ’ ve had , and for the mentors and leaders I ’ ve had as well because you don ’ t get to these sorts of roles just by accident in a way , you get the people around you who help you and support and sponsor you .
You use the word humbling , which is a common word for all of the nominees I ’ ve spoken to . I would imagine doubly so in the last year being the Year of the Nurse and Midwife , and then a global pandemic . We were planning the year and we had all these amazing conferences and
How has the last year been for you professionally ? These days I mostly do research . I bunkered down at home and got working really . I work in the Burnet Institute , which has a history of being an infectious diseases institute from the days of HIV . We were front and centre of the COVID research in Victoria and have done huge amounts of work . I established a network in the state . We ’ ve now got a network across the country of people who are doing COVID work .
We ’ ve brought together big groups of people who ’ ve been doing interesting work in midwifery and maternal health to do surveys around the country of what ’ s been happening with women , what ’ s been happening with women having babies , stillbirth rates , breastfeeding rates .
On a global front I ’ m part of a group that produces a report every three to five years called State of the World ’ s Midwifery and we were going to release a report in 2020 , but then that all got delayed and we ’ re just finalising the report to release this year . But we ’ ve collected a lot of information about COVID across the world and worked with international organisations to understand how COVID affects midwives and maternal healthcare , and what we can do to build back better . So not just get back to where we were , but how we can , post COVID , make maternity care even better than it was .
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