Accession no. |
WWAT 2000/1 |
Accession title |
Domiciliary Midwives Society of New Zealand (Inc.), 1976-2000 |
Folder title | Folder 10 Domiciliary Midwives Standards Review, 1983-1993 |
Holdings location | Wise Woman Archives Trust (Inc.). Available at wwat.nz |
The late Joan Donley, Auckland domiciliary midwife from 1974 to the mid-1990s, wrote about the formation of the Domiciliary Midwives Standards Review Committee in 1989:
The present upsurge in home births began in 1974/5 in response to the increasing regionalisation/medicalisation of childbirth. Although the domiciliary midwife (DM) was governed by the comprehensive Obstetric Regulations monitored by the Medical Officers of Health (MOH), she operated outside the bureaucratic hierarchy of hospital boards where the obstetric monoply of childbirth is maintained. Therefore, the obstetricians had no control over either the GPs or the DMs who suported home births. In 1979 the Medical Council moved to control this movement …read more.
The Domiciliary Midwives Society decided at its annual meeting in 1988 to institute Standards Review Committees in each Area Health Board (as District Health Boards were then called). Committees were soon formed in Auckland, Whangarei and Wellington, followed by Dunedin, Nelson and other regions …read more. The New Zealand College of Midwives adopted and adapted this Standards Review Process some years later when it introduced the Midwifery Standards Review process.