In the eighth webinar from the KCL Midwifery and Maternal Health Research Group we are delighted to bring a focus to midwifery education with two esteemed educators Professor Clara Eidt from the Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Germany and Dr Mary Sheridan from King’s College London.

Professor Eidt will be sharing insights from her PhD work exploring how student midwives in Germany navigate challenges in their training and Dr Mary Sheridan will focus on the implementation of systematic examination of the newborn within the UK midwifery curriculum.

This event will be of interest to maternity professionals, academics, birth workers and service users. We will also allocate time for Q&A.

Please note this will be recorded and sent out after the event - so do sign up if you just wish to receive the recording.

Professor Clara Eidt

Clara Eidt completed her midwifery training in Speyer, Germany in 2013 and subsequently worked as a caseload community midwife for nine years. Her practice focused on supporting families through family planning, pregnancy, birth and the first year postpartum. In 2019, she earned a master's degree in "Applied Sexual Sciences" from Merseburg University of Applied Sciences. During this program, she conducted and published research concentrating on women's post-childbirth sexual experiences and sexuality-related midwifery counseling. She further enhanced her expertise with a three-year training in systemic counseling and therapy, integrating sexual education and counseling into her midwifery practice.

Since 2021, Clara Eidt has been teaching in various settings and institutions across Germany and Switzerland. In 2023, she accepted a tenure-track professorship at the University of Applied Sciences in Fulda, Germany. Concurrently, she is pursuing a PhD at the University of Rostock under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Dorothea Tegethoff. Her doctoral research employs a reconstructive, qualitative social research approach. The study investigates how student midwives in Germany navigate tensions between normative demands and structural conditions during their practical training in maternity care. It aims to deepen the understanding of professional midwifery in Germany and contribute to the development of the field.

Dr Mary Sheridan

Mary Sheridan is a Senior Teaching Fellow at Kings College London in the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care.

About Midwifery and Maternity Health Research Group

The Midwifery & Maternal Health Research Group is developing a programme of high-quality research to foster improvements to the delivery, outcomes and experiences of maternity care services. Our research is underpinned by the Lancet’s Midwifery framework for quality maternal and newborn care (QMNC). The QMNC is based on a definition of midwifery which encompasses skills, attitudes and behaviours, rather than specific professional roles. Therefore, while rooted in midwifery practice, our work goes beyond professional boundaries to centre childbearing women, people and their families.

Staff work within the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, in close collaboration with the Life Course Sciences Women & Children’s Health Department. We are also forging research networks and collaborations with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and Philosophy & Medicine. Additionally, the team bring their existing wider networks, service-user and clinician partnerships and collaborations that will develop and enhance the research profile.

We bring together our diverse but inter-related fields of interest. These have previously included modifiable risk factors for stillbirth, maternity care experiences for those who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, midwifery practices in facilitating complex physiological birth and improving maternity care for women with pre-existing medical conditions. Together, our work will continue to consider the outcomes and experiences of those receiving care, and those delivering care to address some of the key issues facing maternity services today - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/midwifery-maternal-health