We are excit­ed to announce we are under­tak­ing a review of our flag­ship Mater­ni­ty Emer­gency Care (MEC) pro­gram. As with any course in health care, the mater­ni­ty emer­gency course (MEC) has under­gone reg­u­lar updates – five to be exact – since the ini­tial course was designed in 2018 by Ree Dunn, Geri Mal­one, Sue Kildea and Sue Kruske.

Many inno­v­a­tive prac­ti­tion­ers have been involved since then, pro­duc­ing and cre­at­ing this pro­gram. Their work is great­ly val­ued and the team plan to build upon the resources that they gath­ered over the years. It is imper­a­tive that CRANAplus con­tin­ues to deliv­er up-to-date and cur­rent material.

Over time, feed­back had indi­cat­ed course par­tic­i­pants want­ed a change. To home in on how to best meet the needs of mid­wives and RANs, we sent a sur­vey out to over 1,000 past par­tic­i­pants and stake­hold­ers. The results are in, and we are now aware of our audience’s requests and needs. Thank­ful­ly, the back­ground work that pre­vi­ous writ­ers had done on the course cre­at­ed a fan­tas­tic foun­da­tion for the clin­i­cal experts to expand and update.

The team of sub­ject mat­ter experts (SME) con­sists of Leonie McLaugh­lin, Amy Shep­ard, Aman­da For­ti and Michelle Price as lead.

They are cur­rent­ly nut­ting out the new lay­out and being guid­ed by the CRANAplus learn­ing and design man­ag­er, Julie Moran. Julie’s ideas, frame­work and learn­ing strate­gies are sec­ond to none, and with her design, our SME’s con­tent and a whole lot of pas­sion and ded­i­ca­tion, the course is expect­ed to be more inter­ac­tive and moti­vat­ing than ever before.

This MEC (6^th Edi­tion) will fea­ture the infor­ma­tion and evi­dence-based edu­ca­tion rel­e­vant to rur­al and remote nurs­ing in Aus­tralia that CRANAplus is renowned for, but with an inter­ac­tive and engag­ing for­mat that will instil knowl­edge and cre­ate thought-pro­vok­ing learning.

Once the online mod­ules are finalised, the work will start on the work­shop restruc­ture. This will ensure that the online mod­ules and work­shop com­ple­ment each oth­er beau­ti­ful­ly to enhance hands-on learn­ing, which is what the audi­ence has demanded.

After the vig­or­ous process of writ­ing, design­ing and inter­nal review is com­plete, the mate­r­i­al will be reviewed by an exter­nal team. It is hoped that this will val­i­date that what has been writ­ten is rel­e­vant and appro­pri­ate for the intend­ed audi­ence of rur­al and remote nurs­es and health care work­ers in Australia.

This will give the remote area nurs­es and oth­er health care providers that attend these cours­es the absolute key skills they require to be able to pro­vide care to preg­nant women in rur­al and remote Aus­tralia, in con­junc­tion with their mater­ni­ty care providers. It is esti­mat­ed that the mod­ules will be com­plete by June 2022, with a tri­al course to be announced in the sec­ond half of 2022.

Michelle Price
Remote Clin­i­cal Edu­ca­tor
Mid­wifery Stream