Association of Ontario Midwives Summer 2012

Student Profiles
Recent graduates bring new energy
and perspectives to midwifery
In an attempt to address a shortage of obstetrical care in Ontario, the provincial
government announced an expansion in 2007 of the Midwifery Education
Program (MEP) that would eventually see an additional 30 students per year
enrolling in the MEP, bringing each class to 90.
This spring, the first class of the expanded MEP graduated, helping to bump the
number of practicing midwives in Ontario to more than 600.
Meet three newly graduated midwives who are coming into the profession as part of
this first expanded class.
Stephanie Biswell
(McMaster)
Witnessing the prevailing racism in
her community while growing up,
Stephanie Biswell didn’t identify closely
with her Aboriginal heritage.
“It’s hard in Winnipeg to be outwardly
Aboriginal, so I ‘whited’ myself as much
as possible,” Biswell says.
All of that changed over the course
of completing the MEP at McMaster
University, which Biswell graduated
from in May.
“A large part of my growing and selfawareness
came from my classmates,”
she says. “I realized that being Aboriginal
is a key part of who I am and I really
embrace it.”
Thanks to her husband’s work in
Mozambique, Biswell had visions of
traveling to remote communities in
Africa to provide maternity care when
she first joined the program. But over
time and thanks to a placement at a
clinic in downtown Winnipeg, Biswell
shifted her view of how she’d like to practice midwifery.
“I still have visions of doing oversees work and seeing
midwifery from a global perspective, but I’ve also seen how I
have a lot of work to do here, in part with Aboriginal women.
These are my people who need help, and I am in this position
and I should help.”
Biswell is this year’s winner of the Murray and Eleanor
Enkin Midwifery Award at McMaster – which is awarded
to a graduating student who exemplifies superior
achievement in the humanitarian, professional and
academic domains of midwifery practice.
Biswell says that beyond her clinical learning, midwifery
education has also helped expand her perspective and develop
a broader sense of cultural understanding.
“I was young when I joined the program . . . and I felt maybe
I had come into it with all of these ideas of what people were
like or the world was like. (But) you realize the world isn’t so
narrow and you can’t make decisions about how people are.
It’s a life-long journey to never really close off how I think
about something or put people in a box.”
Biswell has accepted a position with Burlington and Area
Midwives and expects to start providing clinical care this
summer.
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ontario midwife • Summer 2012