Participants who register for this course have the option to attend the course live and/or watch the recorded sessions later. The recording will be available to all registrants for a 2-week period after the course/each session. This allows participants who may not be able to attend the live sessions to still benefit from the course content. Please note - if you do not attend live, there will be approximately 10 minutes of images shown which will not be recorded for privacy reasons.
To facilitate attendance tracking, please indicate on your registration form if you won't be attending live.
Course Description:
This course was originally developed with pelvic health physiotherapists in mind as we see a large population of birthing people in their postpartum period yet it will be applicable to anyone working with prenatal people.
Out of those interactions, several central questions kept coming up repeatedly. How could clinicians use their knowledge of pelvic biomechanics to assist birthing people to deliver their babies with less risk to the pelvic floor? What else could we do to help to improve the birth experience? Where is support lacking in birth in Canada?
One of my core beliefs is that healthy parents will equal the best chance at a healthy baby and health is the combination of physical, psychological and social health.
This course will teach participants the ways in which clinicians can play an important role in the delivery room whether they attend the birth or not. We will take a wide view of birth in Canada along with looking at pelvic biomechanics. With that information, we will blend the evidence with our current knowledge, to impact the birth process in a positive way. We discuss common birth myths, examine standards of care, and current evidence around that care. This course can be used to inform your practice and can also be shared directly with patients to support them in their birthing journeys. At the end of the course, you will be ready to attend births if that is your goal. You should also have enough information to conduct small group birth classes of your own. If you choose to go on to support families through the birth, some practical information about how to start that process will be shared.
A section on trauma-informed perinatal care will be added to the online offering this year, with Robyn Synnott as the facilitator of that information. Anita Lambert will continue to teach the use of the peanut ball in labour. There will be a mixture of didactic learning, video replay and breakout group problem solving.
This course is for practitioners who would like to help prepare their clients for the pregnancy and birth process and/or prepare the practitioner to attend births as a support person.
Course Objectives:
- To review current standards of care for birth in Ontario.
- To provide an explanation of trauma from a polyvagal perspective and gain an understanding of how trauma can impact the birth process from both a patient and practitioner perspective, examining the rest of the objectives with a trauma-informed lens.
- To explain the role of a traditional birth support person (doula).
- To understand and expand the role of support people in prenatal care and labour and delivery.
- To learn and understand the stages of labour and delivery.
- To learn the cardinal movements of birth.
- To understand and use pelvic biomechanics in order to facilitate the baby’s movements through the pelvis.
- To learn some ways to support both the birthing woman and her partner in the mental, emotional and physical process of birth.
- To learn and practice manual ligament mobilizations (if it is within your scope of practice) and comfort measures for birth.
- To provide some practical ways to implement this knowledge into a physiotherapy practice.
- To provide a framework for planning your own birth prep programme.
- To provide a variety of ways to help your clients/patients to advocate for themselves during pregnancy and birth.
- To provide a framework to help your clients partners to become active participants in the birth process.
- To provide some ways to manage a birth that does not go as planned.
Audience: This course is open to physiotherapists, naturopathic doctors, nurses, midwives, and medical doctors.
Prerequisites: Level 1 (or equivalent to be approved). Prerequisite waived if you are a nurse, midwife or medical doctor that performs internal palpation. Please mark profession on the registration form.
Registration Form
Schedule
Date/Time: October 21, 28, November 4 & 11, 2024, from 6:30-10:00pm ET (Toronto). Please convert to your local time zone.
Delivery Format
Live attendance is not mandatory for this online course. Enjoy a 2-week window to access and review the course recording, which is sent out on the next business day. Please note - if you do not attend live, there will be approximately 10 minutes of images shown which will not be recorded for privacy reasons. We understand that life can be busy, which is why we offer you the freedom to access the course recording(s) during the time-limited viewing period.
Instructor
Trish Brunelle earned her Diploma in Physiotherapy from Mohawk College in 1988 as well as her Bachelor of Health Sciences from McMaster University in 1989. Trish started her physiotherapy career in Mental Health Services at the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health. This experience taught her the valuable skills she needed to work with a variety of people, building on her use of the biopsychosocial model that she learned in her undergraduate training, while working on her team-building skills. After moving to a small outpatient clinic 2 years later, Trish initially focused most of her continuing education on orthopaedics. As happens, interesting patient problems often took her in search of new knowledge including visceral manipulation, craniosacral therapy, and acupuncture until she eventually she found her way to Pelvic Health 15 years ago. In order to gain the knowledge she needed to treat this complex population, she often travelled to throughout the US and Canada.
Three years ago, Trish opened GetMoving Physio in Barrie, Ontario just steps from Lake Simcoe and the clinic continues to grow. She fits pessaries, teaches hypopressives, teaches Pfilates, works primarily in pelvic health, attends births in her physio-doula role, and is a frequent guest speaker in the community. Trish designed a clinic space that is less clinical and more inviting in the hopes of making Pelvic Health Physiotherapy more of a comfort experience. She lives north of Barrie with her husband and she can often be found on her paddleboard or snowshoes.
Trish firmly believes that a healthy and functional mom, means a healthy and happy baby. Her pelvic health experience has shown her that the focus during birthing is often to birth a healthy baby with sometimes less regard for the health of the birthing mother. She is a passionate advocate for having some balance of health concerns in the delivery room. This led her to increase her knowledge in this area in order to use physiotherapy knowledge of biomechanics, combined with traditional doula wisdom, to help women maintain some locus of control during their birth while attempting to reduce maternal injury. Trish has been to over 20 births and her knowledge continues to grow with each one.
What people are saying
As a pelvic and orthopedic physiotherapist who loves to work with pregnant patients, this course was a no brainer to further my knowledge and skill set when working with this population. Learning from Trish’s unique experiences as a doula/physio was invaluable. It provided me with additional hands on skills to improve the Labour and delivery experience, as well as more knowledge to educate my moms on what is to come. I would recommend this course to anyone who works with pregnant moms in preparing them for Labour and delivery.
– Brittany P
Trish Brunelle is a knowledgeable and professional educator and practitioner. Her course, Labour & Delivery: Maternal Support through Comfort Measures and Pelvic Biomechanics delivered evidence based content supported by quality teaching assistants, resources and practical labs. Together the group learnt more about a female’s journey through pregnancy, labour and delivery, then the fourth trimester. The content within this course is not only beneficial for the professional, but significantly benefits the public. This area of care is not traditionally well known to the public and I was excited to learn how physiotherapists can support women through a challenging yet beautiful time of life! I highly recommend this course if you are eager to learn more about the info delivered in the course objectives!
Second, I highly recommend this course as the host, Pelvic Health Solutions is a supportive facilitator of quality pelvic health education in Canada. I can always trust the quality of courses they present and I am looking forward to another course soon!
– Myranda R