 Hello and welcome to International Day of the Midwife. This is our ninth year as Virtual International Day of the Midwife and it's 5th of May, 2017. I'm very happy to welcome everyone to this talk today on professional portfolios. Thank you for listening to this. I'd just like to acknowledge the University College Lillabyte, Denmark, and Association of Radical Midwives for their continued support of the IDM over the years. And because you're listening to this as a recording, we will click through these, because we have our sound and it's very good, and the record button is on. And I would like to introduce, and it gives me great pleasure to introduce my friend and colleague, Stephanie Curtis. Stephanie began pursuing her goal of becoming a practitioner in women's health in 2011. She graduated with her bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of Florida in the USA in 2013 and has spent her nursing career on the postpartum and labor and delivery units there. Currently, she is a Florida Gator once again at the University of Florida aiming for a doctorate in nursing practice with certification as a nurse midwife. She also serves as the women's health advisor for a mother's hope, a non-profit organization that focuses on equipping and empowering mothers for a healthy motherhood journey. Stephanie dreams of being part of a community which seeks to prioritize the support and betterment of women and their families through health education. She currently resides in Florida. I'm going to mute my microphone and Stephanie, you can take it away. And thank you for coming. I see we've got a participant Rose listening in. Okay, thank you Dr. Houston. So, creating a professional portfolio. I actually wasn't incredibly familiar with this topic. So it was good for me to put this presentation together for my own sake as well because I'll probably start working on one of these pretty soon. So, what is a portfolio? It is not a resume. I wasn't sure what the difference was initially but it really is more like a scrapbook. If you will, a compilation of your education and career background as it relates to midwifery. It's a tool to help you secure position and employer might ask for this or it might be something that you offer when you are seeking out a position. And it also has a record of your career. So it could be really helpful for you just to have knowledge of what you've done so far in areas where you need to improve to help you reflect, which we'll also talk about later on. So it's concerning format, there's your hard copy. So this typically is presented as a three ring binder. And then tabs and dividers to distinguish which sections are which so that you're nice and organized and it's easy for the employer to find information or you can create an e-portfolio which is actually pretty cool. It looks a lot like a blog, the examples I've seen where there's a banner across the top, your picture and name with your credentials and then there's links that connect to all the different sections of information. These two links give some really nice examples. Some of them are for kind of earlier fresh out of school nursing students, if you will and the others are for a bit more of an advanced position. So you can kind of distinguish what yours needs to look like based on the level of professionalism. Stephanie, you know, you can move your slides yourself. So if you look at the bottom, there's a little arrows. So if you want to move your own slides, that would be great. See the little arrows at the bottom? I thought I was moving them. See that? I wasn't seeing, maybe they were moving, I wasn't seeing them. Okay, carry on, sorry. Okay. So documents. This probably isn't an exhaustive list, but there's quite a few things that you could include in your portfolio. And I forgot to mention, the portfolio, there really isn't a right or wrong way in particular. There are some essential elements, which we'll go over, but you really do have the freedom to be creative with this and present yourself in a way that's true to who you are and to your passions as a midwife. So this list, a lot of this is pertinent to me, living in the United States. So I would definitely have my nursing license in there. A CV or resume. So depending on the kind of position you're applying for, you may want a CV rather than a resume. The resume is a more succinct version of your background and history, kind of the cliff notes to the portfolio, if you will. The CV, what's different about that, it's longer than the resume, but it goes more into depth with your academic achievements. So you'd include presentations and projects and more details about those things. Any required, your mandatory annual or bi-annual trainings that you have to have. Continuing education certificates, awards, list of your volunteer positions, professional organizations or committees you might be a part of. You can include samples of your work. So if you have submitted some papers, some abstracts you've been published, those are great things to include and then any references or letters that you might have. So alternative media, I thought this was pretty neat because you can be creative with your portfolio. You can include other forms of information to portray what you've done. So this can include photos and videos. Obviously the e-portfolio would be a better format for those. Audio as well, if you've spoken like I'm doing right now, I guess I could include a link to this recording in my e-portfolio and even artwork. So I included this belly cast over here because this might be something that you teach or you're involved in, you facilitate these types of classes for women and this is great to include. It shows your passion for working hands-on with moms during pregnancy. So the essential elements. Personal info, your basic details of course. You wanna tell them who you are, how to contact you and then an essay. So in the essay, you want to include your professional values and interests and then also plan for your development. So not only why do you want to work at this facility or for this employer, but what will that position do for you as well? Where are you and your goals? How will this job help you to meet those goals? Your qualifications. So with this being an international conference, I'm sure this differs pretty widely. But again, pertinent to the US, I want to have, well, I'll go in more into detail about what I need in the United States, but basically your degree or level of education. So any transcripts from universities or colleges, you've been to core competencies, which you may be able to find on your institution's website and also any national requirements. And we'll talk more about those. So national requirements, your governing body. So for me, I have the American College or Association of Colleges of Nurse Midwives and there's also the Midwifery Certification Board. So the ACNM, that's a professional organization for me, but the AMCB, they're the governing body as far as certification and qualification to be a midwife. So requirements that the AMCB has are pretty much voluntary three categories. Proof of License, sure as an RN, since that's required to be a nurse midwife here. Completion of my degree from an accredited institution to become an advanced practice registered nurse. And then verification and attestation by director of education program, which that typically takes the form of a letter from the director of your program. At least that's what I saw in my research competencies. So what can you do? The idea of full scope midwifery in the States at least is this long list of types of visits. So these, you can do full scope midwifery, this is what would be expected of you. And obviously this will vary from facility to facility. You may not be doing much per year postman apposal care wherever you end up working or much primary care. You may be strictly doing anti-natal, intranatal and postnatal work, but it's important to include all of that depending on where you go because who knows when your practice might expand and they begin to do a little bit more work with per year postman apposal women. So it's good to include it if you've had any of that experience. And then any procedures or skills that you might have. So with the long acting reversible contraception, if you can place IUDs, intraneterine device, I don't know what everything is called in other countries. So I'll explain all the acronyms. If you can place next one on do coposcopy, especially these skills that require additional training, you want to market yourself because not every midwife can perform coposcopy or endometrial biopsy. So it's a good way to kind of peak your employer's interest if you will. Breach delivery, I added that because in the States it's a pretty rare thing, but I know a medical, an obstetrician here where I work, she practiced in Hawaii for a while and breach delivery was a pretty regular occurrence. So that could be really valuable depending on where you're working. So you want to include any educational experience you've had, if you've been an instructor, you've taught any classes, which classes were those, areas of expertise. So if you have a particular interest and you have done continuing education and workshops related to informatics, complimentary alternative medicine, water birth, any of that you want to include, if you've had any management positions, you've been a part of any political action committees or grassroots projects. And also if you have any experience in quality improvement. Here, a part of the doctoral nursing program at my institution, quality improvement is pretty huge. So any training that you've had in quality improvement in the States especially is pretty attractive right now. And Rose, feel free to ask any questions if you have them. Up top there's the little person with the hand up. You can use that person if you need to ask any questions, if you want the microphone, or you can just use the chat box. And welcome Kim as well. Where are you guys from? Oh, very cool. It looks like Kim is joining on her phone. I'm not sure how good that chat interface is on the phone. But good, welcome. So just talked about, yeah, that's right. And we're recording it. So, oh, hello Kim. All right, so you're from this side of the pond as well. I was thinking about moving to Atlanta, that's fun. So we're recording this, but we talked a little bit about some of the essential elements that you want in your portfolio. We're talking about core competencies. And these are just, this is all information that you want to communicate to your future employer so that they know who you are and what you could do for their practice. So another one of those essential elements, and I found this really interesting is reflection. So this quote, I can only be understood backwards, but it must be read forwards. Especially with lots of talk about provider burnout. I've even read some articles about compassion fatigue. That's a thing. I think employers and those in healthcare who are leaders in general are pretty interested in reflection and what you're doing as a provider and personally to help prevent some of that burnout. And then also, like we said earlier, yeah, wait a while and then reflect. But just thinking about ways that you can continually assess your own progress and think about your own strengths and weaknesses to reflection. So like I just said, strengths and weaknesses, areas where you know that you feel very confident and then areas where maybe you don't feel so confident and it's much better to enter into a new facility as a learner rather than a know-it-all. I experienced that personally, not myself, but working alongside a new midwife as a student who she kind of spoiled her new position by kind of being a know-it-all and not being very teachable. So really simple things, but really important to an employer that you're aware of your strengths and weaknesses and you're willing to learn. So areas for improvement, again, that goes along with that. Any impact to incidents or cases? So obviously you wanna stay away from something that maybe gets into like a lawsuit. That might not be something you want to discuss openly, but a case in particular that was really important to you where you really learned something or that's kind of shaped your view of midwifery or that's affected your goals, what you want to do in the future, something like that. Again, just showing who you are, what you want to do, what you'll bring to the practice and even your plans for a continued reflection, that I found really interesting as well. So this practice of mindfulness, just simply being present in the moment, being aware of yourself and aware of what's going on around you. If you do regularly practice meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, your personal faith of religious community, not necessarily to go into detail of all of these things, but this is something you could mention in your essay or in this section on reflection, if you wanted to write up a small essay too, to show again that you are aware that burnout is possible and it's something that you're working to prevent and you're wanting to stay current and passionate about what you do. So some resources, I didn't find many textbooks to help with portfolio specifically in midwifery, but I did find this one with some colleagues from Australia as the authors. This one focuses particularly on e-portfolios, but other than the alternative media like videos and photos, it would probably be pretty easy to translate this to a hard copy as well. I think I will probably create an e-portfolio and a hard copy, depending on who you work for, they may prefer to have the binder. And it was new online for about $30, so that's not bad. If you wanted something that would actually walk you through step by step and give you some more details about do's and don'ts and things like that. So I'm reading your question, Rose. What tips do you have regarding making sure you stay as focused on your goal as possible, the journey to becoming a midwife would be the hardest thing I have ever done? Yep, I feel the same way. I feel the same way, especially my fall semester, and I was definitely wondering, why did I do this? Scheduling your life and sleep. Again, really simple things, but it's so easy to get caught up in self-sacrifice and no sleep and no eating and filling out every piece of paperwork and crossing all your dots or crossing all your teeth and dotting your eyes and you kind of forget to take care of yourself. I think, are you both students? Are these, are Rose and Kim both student midwives? Oh my gosh, two hours. So Rose is in England. Yeah, so we've got, I don't know if I've got a copy of it at the university I work for now that we actually do a whole presentation on looking after yourself as a student because it's very important to eat. We don't want you to burn out before you have a chance to be a midwife. So honestly, scheduling, adequate sleep, making sure that you're doing positive things like Stephanie said, not just drinking beer and crying into it, thinking about yoga or an outside activity every day, doing something for yourself. And scheduling blocks of when you can have some me time is really important. And if you all want microphones, would you like to speak if you've got a quick place where you can speak? Because it's just the four of us, if you'd like to talk. It's just we'll need to mute our microphones in between times so we don't get tons of feedback. I'll give Rosa, let me give Rosa a microphone, is that okay? And I'll give Kim one. I'm not sure Kim might be on the phone, so there. So if you go to the top line there, there should be a little microphone wizard. If you go in the audio setup wizard, you should be able to do that or you can click on the microphone if you want to talk to it. Oh, you can't really speak. Yeah, we don't want to crash your car. So, but yeah, too tight if you like. And it rose if you want to talk, that would be great and I'll be quiet so that Stephanie can continue. Okay, I muted my microphone. But if you decide to speak, Rosa, I'll mute mine again so you don't get any feedback. But with sleep, one thing I learned at my clinical rotation in the fall, it's tempting to stay awake when you're on call with a patient who's laboring. But the midwife I was working with made me go to bed. She said, you have to go to sleep because you just don't know who's going to come through the door. Someone has to get admitted and you're awake again and you haven't had a chance to sleep. And the midwives I work with do 24-hour call and most of the time during the day, especially if it's a weekday, they also have office hours in the morning throughout the day until about four o'clock. So to have a patient in labor and you've worked all day already and you're awake, at the bedside all the time, we want to do that when midwives you like to be handed on but we're also not serving our patients well if we are fatigued and sleep deprived and we're also not serving ourselves well. So it's better to go and catch that nap. Exactly. If only we could be robots and not require sleep. And then also Rose, this isn't something you don't necessarily include in a portfolio but talking with other students or with your preceptors and asking them just open-ended questions. How do you think I handled this? You know, asking them if they see if you have any bad habits, if you will. I know I had this habit of leaving a little bit too much space in our prenatal visits. So we went long because I would just kind of let the person talk a long time and we have 20 minutes for appointments, which was good but even her being able to say, you don't necessarily have to let someone talk for 30 minutes to do a good prenatal visit. That was good because I was able to reflect on that and that'll prevent me down the line from going late and having to apologize to every patient. And again, it's just that self-sacrifice, I won't eat lunch because I've gone long and I don't want anybody to wait. So just having someone around you who's able to point those kinds of things out was really helpful. I didn't know the NHS was struggling. Yes, as a British and American midwife staff, there's a lot of problems with funding and huge influx of migrant women with multitudes of needs and understaffing and there's huge, especially in England and Wales, there's very much upheaval to do with supervision and registration of midwives to do with the Regulation Board there. So there's actually a big action day today, one of our next speakers coming up. She's a feminist midwife in London. There's a big march in London today talking about women's rights. It's called Save the Midwife, so it's quite bad. Sorry to hear about your anxiety, Rose, and I would say that it's not just it's not just British students, but also I see a lot of my American students struggling with anxiety because you have to work full-time, you have to go to school full-time, you have to be a partner full-time, you maybe have some children full-time, so you're pregnant full-time, so it's a lot. All right, Kim, thanks for coming in. That was really great, and if you want to listen again, we'll be putting the recording on our VidM and probably on our Facebook page as well, so thank you. So, Rose, are you going to the march? Or is it gone? Is it finished now, maybe? It's later on there. Oh, lovely, lovely. My nieces are 30-something, so I guess they don't need too much looking after anymore, so good for you. I used to like it when they were small. So when do you finish and take your board examinations, and I'm sure either of us is happy to share our emails if you want to have a support group. We're happy to chat any time. I've been an educator, well, I've been an educator really since I finished nursing school, which was in 30 years ago, how sad, but very happy to talk and share any resources that you might think, here's my email, and I don't know if Steph feels comfortable sharing her email, but I'm happy to get emails from anyone that listens into the recording or wants to email me or if you'd love to email me, we can certainly help you with some resources. And Stephanie is feeling your pain because she's had a lot of exams lately, so she understands where you are at with your education. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming, Rose, and Kim, who was here shortly. And Stephanie, thank you so much for providing this excellent presentation here. I'm going to just finish the recording here, so I'm gonna stop record.