{"id":6297,"date":"2023-07-09T17:36:35","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T05:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6297"},"modified":"2023-07-09T17:36:35","modified_gmt":"2023-07-09T05:36:35","slug":"we-created-a-wraparound-awhi-of-them-aunties-mentor-pacific-midwives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6297","title":{"rendered":"‘We created a wraparound awhi of them’ – Aunties mentor Pacific midwives"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may take a village to raise a child – but it needs a whole lot of “aunties” to grow a new generation of midwives.<\/p>\n

Tapu Ora – Pasifika Midwifery National workforce co-ordinator, Ngatepaeru Marsters, said “wraparound awhi” (support) was key to keeping students on track through the gruelling years of training.<\/p>\n

The nationwide strategy follows a voluntary outreach called the Aunties Initiative that started in 2010, pairing Pacific student “nieces” with registered midwives mentors called “aunties”.<\/p>\n

“A lot of us have done it because we could see the Pacific students weren’t graduating. So we said ‘What do we need to do?’ So we created a wraparound awhi of them, and we called ourselves ‘The Aunties’.”<\/p>\n

\"Ngatepaeru<\/p>\n

Ngatepaeru Marsters.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0Supplied \/ AUT<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Retention for third-year Pacific students at AUT was now 92 percent – up from fewer than 50 percent a decade ago, she said.<\/p>\n

That compares with a more than 40 percent drop-out rate for midwifery students nationally.<\/p>\n

Te Whatu Ora this week\u00a0admitted the number of midwifery training places needed to triple<\/a>\u00a0for the next four years to fix the 40 percent workforce shortage, which is even higher for M\u0101ori and Pasifika.<\/p>\n

Marsters said Tapu Ora offered Pacific students academic mentoring and support, and there was also some limited financial support, including hardship grants.<\/p>\n

One fourth-year student, who RNZ has agreed not to name, said financial pressure had forced many to abandon their studies, or at least put them on hold.<\/p>\n

“Lots of Pasifka women who start midwifery often don’t start as a single woman, they start with three or four kids, some even have seven kids.<\/p>\n

“So you can imagine it would be really hard to manage the financial burden of that, or even find someone to look after your kids when you’ve got on-call placement.”<\/p>\n

Covid-19 had put extra strain on students to complete the 2400 hours needed to qualify, because they were not allowed in hospitals at the height of pandemic, she said.<\/p>\n

“I know a lot of people, including myself, are still trying to catch up. And we have had to quit part-time jobs because we don’t have the time. We still have to buy our own uniforms, pay for parking, petrol, everything.<\/p>\n

“Being paid for some of those clinical placements, an ‘earn as you learn’ model like for apprentices, would be a really big help.”<\/p>\n

Midwifery is a four-year degree that was shoehorned into a three-year timeframe in 2009 by the Midwifery Council, with the intention of producing more graduates more quickly.<\/p>\n

Massey University\u00a0pulled out at that point,<\/a>\u00a0saying the three-year timeframe would compromise student welfare, and research requirements.<\/p>\n

The Midwifery Council told RNZ it did not “dictate” the delivery time of the programmes, which were “defined by the individual schools”.<\/p>\n

As of this year, only Otago Polytechnic and the Ara Institute of Canterbury are sticking with the three-year degree.<\/p>\n

Auckland University of Technology, Waikato Institute of Technology and Victoria University all have four-year degrees.<\/p>\n

The current midwifery degree is 480 points, 4800 hours, which equates to a four-year degree. The relevant section from the standards states:<\/p>\n

3.4. The programme is a 480 point\/credit (4800 hour) degree. A minimum of 50% or 2400 hours is clinical practice and at least 40% or 1920 hours is theory. At least 80% of the final year of the programme must be midwifery clinical practice.<\/i><\/p>\n

Marsters said AUT ran the three- and four-year degree programmes side-by-side for a couple of years, but moved to four years for everyone from this year.<\/p>\n

Cramming the course into three years backfired in its intention of producing graduates more quickly, she said.<\/p>\n

“It was brutal, I don’t think I could have done it. It didn’t do our numbers any good, when you’ve got all the other complexities as well.<\/p>\n

“Some said ‘actually, I really want to catch my breath and have some wh\u0101nau time as well’. So we went to the four years.”<\/p>\n

It had also relieved pressure on the teaching staff, she said.<\/p>\n

Te P\u016bkenga spokesperson Dr Megan Gibbons said its three “Business Divisions” (Otago Polytech, Ara and Wintec) would continue to deliver their existing programmes until a unified programme was developed and approved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It may take a village to raise a child – but it needs a whole lot of “aunties” to grow a new generation of midwives. Tapu Ora – Pasifika Midwifery National workforce co-ordinator, Ngatepaeru Marsters, said “wraparound awhi” (support) was key to keeping students on track through the gruelling years of training. The nationwide strategy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6299,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions\/6299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}