Note: This article was originally posted in our April 2018 newsletter, and has not been updated.
As midwives know, setting and maintaining high professional standards is fundamental to public protection and public confidence in the midwifery profession. At the College, we need to ensure that our standards of practice clearly set out the high standards we expect of all midwives. This led us to develop the new Professional Standards for Midwives (Professional Standards), which were approved by Council on March 21st.
Members are likely aware of these changes, as we held two public consultations, and dedicated our Member Education Day to the topic. We carefully considered each comment, question, and suggestion. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who provided feedback and helped to strengthen the Professional Standards.
The second public consultation ended in December of 2017, and since then the Professional Standards Working Group has worked with staff to update the last draft of the Professional Standards and create this final version that was approved by Council.
The new Professional Standards will come into effect on June 1, 2018. Midwives are encouraged to review the document in advance to consider if and how their practise of the profession needs to change to meet the new standards. While we anticipate that the change from prescriptive standards of practice to the new, more principles-based Professional Standards will not have a major impact on the way that midwives practise, it is incumbent on each member to ensure compliance on June 1 2018.
You can read the Professional Standards here. Please send in any questions you may have about thew new Professional Standards. We’ll use your questions to create a Question & Answer section of the site that we hope will be able to help all midwives with implementing the standards. If you have a question to share please email in to cmo@cmo.on.ca and we’ll get back in touch as soon as possible.
Public protection is at the heart of everything we do, and our principles-based approach to the standards is designed to benefit midwifery clients, the greater public, and the profession as a whole. We are excited about the implementation of these new standards as we know it is a positive step forward for our College, and we want to work with midwives to work out any bumps in the road. We look forward to hearing from midwives and will send reminder messages as we approach the June implementation date.