WHEN a person’s waters break and that “person” goes into labour, we’ve gone too far.

That sums up the position of Australia’s midwives, who have had to fight to get “woman”, rather than “person”, into their new code of conduct.

The Nursing and Midwifery Board took the nation’s 30,000 midwives by surprise when it drafted the new code and replaced references to “woman-centred care” with “person-centred care”. The Board invited submissions on the draft code and they flooded in, from the profession, academics and individuals.

UniSA midwifery professor Mary Steen told The Advertiser it was a “wise decision” to retain woman-centred care.

“Midwife means with woman,” she said. “The woman is at the centre of a midwife’s scope of practice, which is based on the best available evidence to provide the best care and support to meet individual women’s health and wellbeing needs.”

Professor Alison Kitson, vice president and executive dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University, agreed.

“Retaining the ‘woman-centred’ term is important to remind us all that our care is focused on the women and the significant life-changing experience they are about to have,” she said.

Selena Pregarc, who runs Selena Jean Hair, at St Morris, is 32 weeks pregnant and under the care of an obstetrician and a midwife.

“The most feminine thing to do is to carry a baby,” she said.

“Women are really the only ones who can have children and midwives are there to help women through.”

Mrs Pregarc said the midwife was primarily for her, not for husband Andrew, as the pair approached the birth of their first child.

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Dr Caroline Homer, from the Centre for Midwifery at Sydney’s University of Technology, was among those to make submissions on the Board’s draft code of conduct for midwives.

“Person-centred care also removes the woman from the central role in her child-bearing

experience and renders her invisible,” she says in her written submission.

Australian College of Midwives spokeswoman Sarah Stewart said midwifery had to be about women.

“Once we start moving down the road of talking about women as persons, we lose women’s identity — that fundamental essence,” she said.

“Women are struggling to have their voices heard enough as it is.

“It’s another chip at women’s identity. That’s my personal view.”

A midwifery adviser to the College’s Policy and Professional Practice Unit, Mrs Stewart said revision was important but some things did not need fixing.

“You can’t have codes just sit there and not be revised for years and years on end because things change but woman-centred care and partnership with women is absolutely at the heart of the profession,” she said.

“The profession has always gone down the road of believing that when you talk about women, you talk about her significant other.

“We talk about partnering with the woman so she can look after her baby. That then encompasses the rest of the family as well.”

Mrs Stewart said she acknowledged there were “individual instances” of people who were physically female but identified as male.

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“There is a growing discussion around that but I personally feel at this stage the absolute vast majority of people we care for are women,” she said.

Other submissions to the Board argued Australia’s code should be consistent with those internationally, which still referred to the care of women.

In a written response to questions from The Advertiser, a “spokesperson” for the Board said the use of “person” had been proposed for the codes of conduct for both nursing and midwifery, to reflect the person receiving care and the person’s family and others.

However, the Board acquiesced to the submissions from midwives.

The nursing code will retain “person-centred” care and the midwifery code has retained “woman-centred” care.

The new codes take effect from March next year.

Originally published as Midwives rebel as political correctness goes too far