Education and prevention in midwifery

Health area careers are mainly oriented and concerned about people care. There are several ways to achieve this difficult work, however there are two of these which are very interesting: educate and prevent.
In midwifery, education and prevention are essential topics. These strategies are used to accomplish health promotion, which implies to understand that health depends on a lot of different factors such as social, environmental, economic and politic; all of them focused on individuals, family and community.
Educate is a complex process which involve transmission, recreation, creation and knowledge capture in order to health preservation. Thus, we are be able to prevent appearance of diseases and controlling risk factors that may hinder in develop of a healthy life and even conduce to a premature death. Prevention is very important in policies formulation and health activities orientation.
Midwives, especially in primary care centers, have the opportunity to intervene in a community through education projects, using the education as a tool to get health reestablishing, due to in these places exist a closer contact with the patients.
As a future midwife, I’m going to mention five different ways that may help educate individuals, families or communities, in health terms:

1. Give information about how to have a responsible sexual life, which consider use of contraceptive methods to prevent an unexpected pregnancy or a Sexually Transmitted Disease.
2. Promote healthy lifestyles which include doing frequent exercise (at least three times a week), and having good alimentary habits. They may diminish fats consume and increase vegetables and fruits consume.
3. In families, mothers are key figures; therefore if I educate them I might suppose that their families will also be informed. That’s why they are an interesting focus group to intervene in any ambit.
4. Promote early detection of any kind of disease as the best way to be and remaining healthy.
5. Create commitment in patients because they are the only persons who are responsible for their health.

Gender problems in midwifery

Hi everyone!! Today I’m going to talk about gender problems.
A gender problem referred to a specific work area is related to any kind of discrimination suffered by a workers group due to form the minority. Midwifery is a good example of that. This is a career studied mainly by women therefore men make up the minority group. However, the discrimination which experiment male midwives isn’t precisely done by their colleagues, but some patients who they have attended. Sometimes female patients say they feel embarrassed when male midwives do them a physical examination. They do not feel comfortable.
In nursery happens the same situation. There are more female nurses than male nurses hence, in my point of view, they feel just like male midwives.
I don’t know if gender issues among health workers occur in other countries but I think it does.
A long time ago I saw a movie called “Meet the parents” (La familia de mi novia). In this movie, the main character was a male nurse who met her fiancé’s family and he had to stand for their mocking due to his profession.