BU Research Blog

At the Royal College of Midwives conference in Harrogate over the 19^th and 20^th October a strange ‘art’ installation appeared formed of, in the region of, 500 knit and crochet midwives. The purpose of the display was to highlight the current shortage of midwives throughout the UK and started as a light hearted conversation on twitter between Dr Jenny Hall from the midwifery team in Bournemouth University and midwifery lecturer Lindsay Hobbs in the University of Bradford. (More information is here https://knittedmidwife.wordpress.com/)

When the conversation took place the statistics showing the number of midwives required was 2600 (by the time the project had commenced it had risen to 3500). To highlight the situation, the @knittedmidwife was born, encouraging midwives and others to ‘knit a midwife’ to solve the problem in time for the RCM conference. Instructions for a simple pattern were placed on a blog and participants were encouraged to create their own clothes. The campaign caused some amusement and inspiration with non-knitters persuading friends and family to knit one for them. Some midwife teams had ‘knit-evenings’. They arrived in batches from as far afield as Texas and Germany. The display at the conference was well received but the knowledge that the number presented was only 500 of the 3500 missing midwives gave impact. A final twist was that each was sold in aid of the RCM benevolent fund; midwives being sold to aid other midwives.

As an adjunct to the project the ‘knitters’ were asked to send with their midwife a message as to why they had done so. At the conference itself questionnaires were also present to inquire about the impact of the display. This ‘knitted midwife’ project will therefore live on as the lecturers mentioned will now be evaluating the messages and questionnaires.

And here is the mini-me midwfery lecturer, complete with pinards stethescope and tablet computer….. More will follow as the project develops.