‘Leadership is for everybody’, concludes conference

By Hollie Ewers on 13 June 2018 Leadership Education Zepherina Veitch Memorial Lecture

The RCM education conference held yesterday (12 June) looked at enabling leadership, partnership and safety, and provided the message that leadership is for all.

RCM CEO Gill Walton opened the conference and spoke to delegates about the importance of everybody’s roles in midwifery education. 

‘You’re creating the future,’ she said. ‘Safety, partnership and leadership is the main focus and we have to bear this in mind in how we prepare midwives to lead the way. We need to fuel their passion to be a midwife and we have to ignite their excitement and keep it burning.’

Delegates also heard from speakers regarding the review of the NMC pre-registration midwifery education standards, the UCAS data acquired by the RCM about the people who apply for and are being accepted onto midwifery degrees, and they heard from professor of midwifery Jayne Marshall about the new undergraduate master in science programme with leadership at the University of Leicester.

An interesting Pecha Kucha session at the end of the conference saw seven students discuss their different leadership and partnership working and highlighted the importance of the student voice in shaping midwifery education.

The conference was followed by the presentation of RCM fellowship awards by RCM president Kathryn Gutteridge to Laura Abbott, Annette Briley, Professor Grace Edwards, Professor Jayne Marshall, Denise Tiernan, Susan Way and Marion Wilyman.

The day concluded with the 20th annual Zepherina Veitch lecture, which was presented this year by the RCM’s director for midwifery Louise Silverton, who retires in July.

Louise’s lecture ‘Enemas and shaves for all: midwifery since 1978’ looked back at her career in midwifery and reflected on the changes and developments of the women, the system and the care.