Athena Sheehan

• RN RM MN PhD
• Managing Director at Western Sydney University

Background Midwifery practice experience for midwifery students is an important component of education to enhance knowledge and skill development. Practicing midwives provide student support in the clinical setting, there is minimal literature relating to strategies midwives use to support students. Objective To explore midwifery student experienc...

Objective: Translational research to advance design criteria and apply the Childbirth Supporter Study (CSS) findings to practice. Background: The physical design of birth environments has not undergone substantial improvements in layout or ambiance since the initial move to hospitals. Cooperative, continuously present childbirth supporters are b...

Aim: To describe the implementation and evaluation of a midwife/midwifery student-mentoring program in one Local Health District in Sydney NSW Australia. Background: Evidence suggests well designed and supported midwife/midwifery student mentorship programs can make a difference to the clinical placement experiences and attrition rates of midwif...

Background Integral to quality midwifery practice is the education of midwives. Like other countries, Australia faces ongoing challenges in delivering midwifery education programs. Reasons include escalating program costs, challenges in securing meaningful clinical experiences, subsumption of midwifery with nursing, and associated loss of identity...

Introduction Pregnancy interrupts the traditional trajectory of a young woman when they are suddenly placed on an accelerated physical and emotional developmental pathway, simultaneously towards adulthood and motherhood. The Australian rate of young women pregnancy is at an all-time low. However, the smaller number of young pregnant women are very...

Introduction There is growing interest in the use of sterile water injections (SWI’s) for pain relief, however many midwives do not offer this option as part of their practice (Lee et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2019). Non-pharmacological approaches such as SWI’s are beneficial because not only do they relieve back pain, they do not pose additional risk...

Background The majority of maternity care is provided by female midwives who have either become mothers or are of childbearing age, but there is limited research exploring midwives’ own personal childbearing experiences. This integrative review aims to explore the published literature and research on midwives’ own experiences of pregnancy and child...

Background Maternity care in Australia is predominantly provided by midwives, many who give birth. There is a paucity of research on midwives own childbearing preferences and experiences. Aim To explore midwives childbirth preferences and outcomes when giving birth to their first child in Australia, after qualifying as a midwife. Methods An onlin...

Background Multiple-mini interviews (MMI) are increasingly used as part of the admission process into healthcare degrees. Evaluations have found MMIs to be a fair assessment tool in terms of reliability and validity and viewed positively by those involved in the MMI process. The use of MMIs in midwifery is novel and evaluation is lacking. Aim To e...

Background The majority of maternity care is provided by female midwives who have either become mothers or are of childbearing age, but there is limited research exploring midwives’ own personal childbearing experiences. This integrative review aims to explore the published literature and research on midwives’ own experiences of pregnancy and child...

Background: The appreciative inquiry (AI) interview follows a specific format and needs to be planned and developed before implementation. AI questions are designed to draw on the interviewee's experiences, commencing with general questioning and progressing to more focused questioning. Aim: To explain how to plan and undertake AI interviews, an...

Objective This paper reports findings from a study about women's experience of postpartum psychosis which affects 1-2 women in 1000 in the first four to six weeks following childbirth. Previous research reports many women are relucent to disclose symptoms of mental ill health to healthcare professionals, although they are most likely to discuss sym...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has caused isolation, fear, and impacted on maternal healthcare provision. Aim To explore midwives’ experiences about how COVID-19 impacted their ability to provide woman-centred care, and what lessons they have learnt as a result of the mandated government and hospital restrictions (such as social distancing) duri...

Background Good mentoring is important for students to support their adjustment to and learning in the clinical environment. The quality of the mentoring relationship is key for students but there is a lack of evidence explaining how a good mentor/mentee relationship establishes and develops over time. Aim To explore the developing relationship be...

Background Admission to the Bachelor of Midwifery (BMid) in Australia has traditionally been based on academic ranking. The BMid is a high demand course offered to a limited number of students and therefore choosing applicants who complete the degree is important. Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) are used to assess non-cognitive skills and select st...

Background In Australia, midwives care closely for women during pregnancy and birth and the immediate postnatal period. This scoping review aimed to explore the experiences of female maternity healthcare professionals when they return to work following a personal pregnancy loss or neonatal death. Methodology: A scoping review was carried out on pub...

Objective To identify, critique and synthesise the evidence about the impact of Appreciative Inquiry on improving nursing and midwifery students as they transition into becoming new graduates. Design An integrative review. Data sources The databases were: Pubmed, Ovid Medline, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health and Scopus. Review meth...

Objective Although guidelines recommend antenatal care providers such as midwives promote oral health during pregnancy, oral health training is not routinely provided in undergraduate midwifery curricula. The aim of this study was to implement an oral health module into an Australian undergraduate midwifery program, and evaluate its effectiveness i...

Background: Significant efforts by governments at a global and national level have not resulted in a significant increase in the duration of breastfeeding to six months. The views of family and social networks, and community attitudes particularly around breastfeeding in public, influence infant feeding decisions. Yet many interventions designed t...

Background: Decisions about infant feeding are embedded and are continuously made within a woman's social and cultural context. Despite the benefits of breastfeeding to both women and infants, and government policies and laws to protect and promote breastfeeding, breastfeeding in public remains a controversial issue. The purpose of this paper is t...

Objective: The aim of the study was to explore how women and midwives prepare, during the antenatal period, for the possibility of intrapartum transfer from planned home birth. Design: A Constructivist Grounded Theory approach was taken in order to focus upon the social interactions and processes that emerged. Setting: Urban and regional areas...

This integrative review explores current published literature examining grief experiences of nurses who work in hospital settings after the death of a patient in their care and the factors that may impact nurses experiencing grief within the workplace. Background Healthcare workers such as nurses are required to be competent, skilled and resilient...

For many mothers in Australia, worries about pregnancy, birth and parenthood have become a source of considerable anxiety. Although apprehension and heightened concern are normal responses to change, raised expectations, contradictory information, the increased surveillance of mental health issues and a fragmented health system may contribute to th...

Objective: the aim of the study was to explore the views and experiences of women, midwives and obstetricians on the intrapartum transfer of women from planned homebirth to hospital in Australia. Design: a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach was taken, to conceptualise the social interactions and processes grounded in the data. Setting: ur...

Aim: To describe midwifery students' practice experience and to explore facilitators and barriers to positive clinical learning experiences. Background: Practice experience is a vital component of every midwifery course. Course dissatisfaction and attrition of midwifery students has been attributed to sub-optimal practice experiences. Events or...

Introduction: Recent research has demonstrated that the media presentation of childbirth is highly medicalized, often portraying birth as risky and dramatic. Media representation of breech presentation and birth is unexplored in this context. This study aimed to explore the content and tone of news media reports relating to breech presentation and...

Background Conducting video-research in birth settings raises challenges for ethics review boards to view birthing women and research-midwives as capable, autonomous decision-makers. Aim This study aimed to gain an understanding of how the ethical approval process was experienced and to chronicle the perceived risks and benefits. Research design...

Background It is accepted that healthcare’s physical environment influences patients and staff’s perceptions and experiences. Research has explored how birth unit design influences women and midwives’ experiences during childbirth. However, although there is evidence that cooperative supporters are beneficial to laboring women, and that women desir...

In this article, we aim to explore the impact of social discourses of risk around childbirth on the decisions made for birth by women who planned to have a breech baby late in pregnancy. This article uses data from a qualitative descriptive study in New South Wales, Australia in 2013. In the study, we talked to 22 women about their decision-making...

Background: Women with a breech baby late in pregnancy may use the internet to gather information to assist in decision-making for birth. The aim of this study was to examine how women use English language internet discussion forums to find out information about vaginal breech birth and to increase understanding of how vaginal breech birth is perc...

Objective: To explore inhibiting and facilitating design factors influencing childbirth supporters’ experiences. Background: Birthing women benefit from the continuous, cooperative presence of supporters. However, little research has investigated how birth room design facilitates or inhibits supporters’ role navigation. Methods: We conducted an e...

Objective: this study examined images of birth rooms in developed countries to analyse the messages and visual discourse being communicated through images. Design: a small qualitative study using Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) social semiotic theoretical framework for image analysis, a form of discourse analysis. Setting/participants: forty im...

Introducion: In the developed world, 97-99% of women give birth in a hospital labour room. Burgeoning research has shown the highly technological birth environment is associated with increasing rates of medical intervention and caesarean section births. Few studies have examined the objects of the hospital birth space (furniture, medical equipment,...

Simulated teaching methods enable a safe learning environment that are structured, constructive and reflective. We prepared a 2-day simulation project to help prepare students for their first clinical practice. A quasi-experimental pre-test – post-test design was conducted. Qualitative data from the open-ended survey questions were analysed using c...

Exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life offers the recommended best start in the life for a newborn baby. Yet, in Australia only a small number of babies receive breast milk exclusively for the first 6 months. Reasons for the introduction of formula milk are multi-factorial including access to appropriate support and the woman's expe...

In N. Fernando & G. Allen Barker (Eds.), Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association. The 46th Annual Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association: BrainSTORM: Dynamic Interactions of Environment-Behavior and Neuroscience, Los Angeles, CA, (p. 249). Madison, WI: The Environmental Design...

Recent evidence supports the safety of planned home birth for low-risk women when professional midwifery care and adequate collaborative arrangements for referral and transfer are in place. The purpose of this article is to synthesize the qualitative literature on the experiences of women planning a home birth, who are subsequently transferred from...

Background: Implementation of the Baby Friendly Health Initiative (BFHI) is associated with increases in breastfeeding initiation and duration of exclusive breastfeeding and ‘any’ breastfeeding. However, implementation of the BFHI is challenging. Aim: To identify and synthesise health care staff perceptions of the WHO/UNICEF BFHI and identify facil...

*NOTE* This is a poster presentation from the Australian College of Midwives 18th Biennial Conference held in Hobart 30 Sept - 3 Oct. subsequently published in Women & Birth. If you are interested in seeing the original poster - with visuals - please feel free to contact me. It is well known that the physical environment of healthcare influences t...

Research indicates that multiple factors are associated with decisions women make about infant feeding, yet few studies have explored the decision-making process. In this article, we present the analysis that produced the core category “deconstructing best,” previously reported as part of a grounded theory exploring 37 Australian women’s infant fee...

Aims and objectives: To describe the use of family conversations as a data collection strategy in a study that aimed to explore how 'social context' impacts on the infant feeding and early parenting choices of first-time mothers. Specifically, the authors aim to describe the challenges and benefits of facilitating 'family conversations' and the im...

Midwives are the main health professional group providing support and assistance to women during the early establishment of breastfeeding. In published accounts of early breastfeeding experiences women report high levels of dissatisfaction with health professional support. To gain an understanding of this dissatisfaction, we examined the way in whi...

Spiritual care is an important component of holistic care. In Australia competency statements relating to nursing practice emphasise the need to provide care that addresses the spiritual as well as other aspects of being. However, many nurses feel they are poorly prepared to provide spiritual care. This is attributed largely to lack a of spiritual...

Aim: the aim of the study was to examine the dominant discourses that midwives draw on to present information on breast feeding in group-based antenatal education sessions. Background: breast-feeding initiation rates are high among Australian women however, duration rates are low. Antenatal breast-feeding education is considered a key strategy i...

This paper is an empirically informed opinion piece revisiting an argument published in Midwifery 10 years ago, that the increasing professionalisation of breast feeding was not supporting women in Australia in sustaining breast feeding. We present the last 10 years of primary research on the topic, explore major policy initiatives and the establis...

Internationally, women give mixed reports regarding professional support during the early establishment of breastfeeding. Little is known about the components of midwifery language and the support practices, which assist or interfere with the early establishment of breastfeeding. In this study, critical discourse analysis has been used to describe...

The Baby Friendly Hospital (Health) Initiative (BFHI) is a global initiative aimed at protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding and is based on the ten steps to successful breastfeeding. Worldwide, over 20,000 health facilities have attained BFHI accreditation but only 77 Australian hospitals (approximately 23%) have received accreditation...

Both peer and professional support have been identified as important to the success of breastfeeding. The aim of this metasynthesis was to examine women's perceptions and experiences of breastfeeding support, either professional or peer, to illuminate the components of support that they deemed "supportive." The metasynthesis included studies of bot...

Australia is considered to have a high breastfeeding initiation rate. Research has demonstrated that the main reason that many women choose to breastfeed their baby is based on their understanding that ‘breast is best’. This is not surprising given that the benefits of breastfeeding are broadly promoted and a number of strategies have been delibera...

To explore the perceptions, understandings, and experiences of maternity service staff toward the World Health Organization/United Nations Children's Fund (WHO/UNICEF) Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) and its implementation in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). An exploratory study using naturalistic methods of inquiry. Participants w...

To explore the challenges of conducting an observational study of postnatal interactions, between midwives and women, when the researcher was a midwife observing in familiar midwifery settings. Participant observation conducted by researchers who are themselves midwives raises questions regarding the influence of 'identity' and 'insider' knowledge...

Despite considerable evidence and effort, breastfeeding duration rates in resource-rich countries such as Australia remain below World Health Organization recommendations. The literature on the experience of breastfeeding indicates that women construct and experience breastfeeding differently depending upon their own personal circumstances and the...

This paper is a report of a grounded theory study of woman's infant feeding experiences and decisions in the first 6 weeks after birth. Breastfeeding is considered the optimum method of infant feeding. Studies have identified numerous factors associated with infant feeding decisions. What remains unexplored are the mechanisms by which socio-demogra...

Research suggests women find the first 2 to 6 weeks to be the most difficult time for breastfeeding. It has been identified that women need and seek support with breastfeeding during this time. Support is a difficult concept to define. When discussed by professionals, support for breastfeeding is generally viewed in terms of providing information a...

Background: Breastfeeding conveys significant health benefits to infants and mothers yet in many affluent nations breastfeeding rates continue to decline across the early months following birth. Both peer and professional support have been identified as important to the success of breastfeeding. What is not known are the key components or elements...

To explore the relationships between maternal distress, breast feeding cessation, breast feeding problems and breast feeding maternal role attainment. Longitudinal cohort study. Three urban hospitals within Sydney, Australia. 449 women were invited to participate in the study, with an 81% response rate. Self-report questionnaires were used to colle...

To describe the baby-feeding decisions of a group of Australian women prior to birth. A qualitative study using face-to-face in depth interviews was undertaken with 29 women. All interviews were audio-tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. The women observed and sought information from a variety of sourc...

This paper is the third in a series reporting on thefindings of the AMAP Education Survey of the 27 Australian universities providing a program for initial authorisation to practise as a midwife. Workforce issues were identified by this research, such as the potential number of places in courses, attrition rates, and the number of graduates from mi...

This paper is the second in a series of three, reportingon the findings of the Australian Midwifery Action Project (AMAP) Education Survey. It concentrates on the barriers to effective midwifery education as identified by the midwifery course coordinators from the 27 Australian universities providing a midwifery program for initial authorisation to...

This longitudinal study describes the relationships among breastfeeding experiences, maternal breastfeeding satisfaction (measured by the Maternal Breastfeeding Evaluation Scale [MBFES]), and weaning in the first 3 months postpartum. Postal surveys were used to collect data antenatally and at 2 weeks, 6 weeks, and 3 months postpartum from 365 women...

Anecdotally, concerns are often expressed about the varying infant feeding decisions among women from different cultural groups. This paper reports the early infant feeding decisions and duration of breastfeeding in 986 women from English, Chinese and Arabic-speaking backgrounds in Sydney during 1997 and 1998. Data were collectedfrom an audit of me...

In this paper, the authors draw upon recent Australian research to provide a critical commentary on the current policies and professional practices surrounding breast feeding. These studies, conducted by the first and second authors, explored aspects of the breast-feeding experience, with the findings highlighting areas for concern in relation to t...

To test whether a new community-based model of continuity of care provided by midwives and obstetricians improved maternal clinical outcomes, in particular a reduced caesarean section rate. Randomised controlled trial. A public teaching hospital in metropolitan Sydney, Australia. Sample 1089 women randomised to either the community-based model (n =...

Objective To test whether a new community-based model of continuity of care provided by midwives and obstetricians improved maternal clinical outcomes, in particular a reduced caesarean section rate. Design Randomised controlled trial. Setting A public teaching hospital in metropolitan Sydney, Australia. Sample 1039 women randomised to either the c...

To compare a woman-centered antenatal breast-feeding programme based on concepts of peer and husband/partner support with a control group, who received antenatal breast-feeding education led by a midwife childbirth educator. Longitudinal, quasi-experimental study. A large private hospital in Sydney. A convenience sample of 179 primiparous women who...