1. A reminder for everyone on how to cope with stress.
Up in Alaska, we get tons of snow and ice all winter long – but that’s our normal. But the middle and Northeast United States have been slammed this past week with record low temperatures and little infrastructure to manage the amount of snow. Make sure you are handling stress in a healthy way no matter what life is putting on your plate now.
2. A book recommendation for parents and parents to be!
I predict this is going to be my favorite book of the year. My sister recommended Parenting Scripts last fall to me and then I chose it for our book of the month club. I must have written or highlighted every other page. If you have small children and are frustrated with saying the same things over and over to them every day without change in behavior or heart – you will LOVE this book. I imagine I’ll re-read this one over the next ten years too.
3. This article on non-contraception users.
In summary, the authors (Frederiksen & Ahrens, 2020) looked at women who were at risk for unplanned/unintended pregnancy from not using contraception. Contraception education and shared decision making was a big part of my life this past year so I found the article really interesting. In the population they studied, non-users of contraception were not using contraception because:
- They didn’t mind if they got pregnant (22.6%)
- They worried about contraceptive side effects (21.0%)
- They didn’t think they could get pregnant (17.6%)
I have heard women cite every one of these in clinic visits as reasons for not using contraception. The two I worry about that we should improve counseling on are the last two – side effects and not thinking they could get pregnant. Have you guys thought any of these things? With our family planning, we never minded if we got pregnant but I also never had my cycles return until my babes were at least 1 year old! If you missed all the contraception talk or the awesome contraception tools – check the posts out here and here!
4. Breastfeeding reduces dental cavities in babes!
The public health nerd in me LOVES this fact. I love to share the benefits of breastfeeding and could probably talk about it all day. Breastfeeding is so much more than a food source for the baby and has amazing lifelong benefits for mama and baby. This is just one more thing I’ll add to the list of benefits of breastfeeding! (I feel another infographic coming…).
5. This article on how to involve frontline providers in the cost of health care.
This is an article from 2017 but it came across my path this week and I loved it. Something that I learned about doing quality improvement last year is that numbers don’t lie. Data will tell you information about anything – the problem is collecting it! I hadn’t seen a quality improvement method that someone implemented at unit level that focused on cost before. To me, this is brilliance and where healthcare should be going.
The article brought these questions to mind: Why should cost be top down in an organization? Why are we only looking at things quarterly? Would looking at cost weekly help to identify areas that could reduce costs and improve efficiencies?
I hope it gets your brain bytes turning as well. And if you’ve done something like this on your unit or place of work, please email me and tell me all about it! The hospital in the article was in Scotland.
Other goodies….
- A reminder about this page of resources from the CMQCC. I’ve had a lot of personal text messages come my way about preconception/pregnancy/breastfeeding and COVID or the COVID vaccines. This page has a great Q+A!
- If you are aiming up for some spring cleaning and simultaneously prepping a to-be-read list for the year, check out paperbackswap.com! I get about 10 books a year through swapping and it never fails to make me smile when they show up. It’s not a site for getting books quickly, but the books that I’d like to read at some point generally make the wish list on the site.
- This opinion article about resident doctors being HUMAN and a call to end 26 hour shifts. Did anyone else know that shift work is consider a carcinogen? It makes sense but I had not seen that in black and white until now! For those interested, here’s the link to the article on shift work and cancer.
- Do you care for military members, veterans or their families? Consider attending this live virtual event next week, February 25th, 2021 (7 CE hours are available!).
- Are you a midwifery student? Apply to attend the ACNM conference for FREE! This is a great opportunity. I went to the conference in 2014 and loved all of the education. There are also opportunities for a first time attendee or a retiree to attend as well!
- Are you an NRP provider or instructor? The 8th Edition of NRP launches this summer. Check out the highlights here if you’re interested:
The scholarships were all updated on the MAKE MORE MIDWIVES page! Please let me know if I can add a scholarship that’s not listed to the list. I also added a new area for continuing education hours on the MAKE MORE MIDWIVES page. I don’t know about you guys, but I seem to look for those at the most random times and I have a number of certifications that all renew at different times (insert headache emoji here please).
Stay safe wherever you may be this weekend!
Jamie
1 year ago on the blog…Women Ask Wednesday: The Well Woman Visit
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