Registered Midwife

This is an opportunity for up to 5 registered midwives or new graduate midwives to work within a team based care model.

The First Steps Early Pregnancy Triage Clinic in Kamloops opened 18 September 2023 as a team-based  initiative to improve accessibility to essential early pregnancy care for pregnant individuals in the Thompson Region.  Patients enter care by self-referral or by referral from a healthcare provider or community service.  The clinic follows an interdisciplinary and collaborative model, utilizing the expertise of family physicians, an onsite nurse practitioner, RN and LC support, and registered midwives.

By utilizing a combination of virtual and in-person visits, the clinic optimizes the capacity of our clinician base while providing both urban and rural patients with prompt access to necessary care. The clinic provides a triage service, identifying high risk pregnancies and facilitating early interventions to improve patient outcomes.  Patients benefit from streamlined, first contact, initial pregnancy care,  triage and referral ideally by 20wks of pregnancy.  The clinic has an intake of 50 – 60 pregnant people every month.  Most patients will be referred to the Thompson Region Family Obstetrics Group, a hospital based maternity clinic, for ongoing antenatal, delivery, and postpartum care. Some patients are referred to OBs or other high risk and specialist services as needed.  Unfortunately, due to ongoing capacity shortfalls, there are approximately 15 pregnant people in every month who remain unattached to a delivery provider and therefore deliver as « unattached » patients with the « doctor of the day » at our L&D unit.

First Steps clinic also provides support for early miscarriage and threatened miscarriage, contraceptive and sexual health counselling, early and late termination care, group based postpartum care up to 6 weeks, and mental health supports and referrals.

Patient population is a mix of rural and urban, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous families, and new immigrant families where English is not their first language. Translation tools are utilized.

Antenatal and postpartum care is scheduled Mon – Friday, 9am – 4pm, and is not attached to an on-call service.  We are recruiting for RMs interested in providing on-call shifts (12 or 24h) for clients of the clinic who are unattached to a delivering provider, as well as participating in the antenatal / postpartum clinic as their individual interest and availability allow.  Currently the clinic has one part time GP, one full time NP, one full-time RN and a casual RN/LC who runs the postpartum group, as well as 4 – 5 midwives providing primarily virtual care.   

Our goal is to build up a call group of 5 midwives for a caseload of approximately 15 due dates per month in a primarily hospital based medical model. There is excellent support from our L&D nursing team, as well as excellent relationships with our OB consultant group.  Midwives are supported to practice full scope, including surgical assist at cesarean deliveries. 

Royal Inland Hospital is a tertiary hospital in Kamloops with a large rural referral catchment area across the Thompson-Cariboo region.   There are 5 community based midwives who practice in a continuity caseload model with a homebirth rate of 30% or more every year.  

Ours is a new program and still very much in the stage of innovation, evolution and streamlining. We welcome people who are excited about visioning, advocating and participating in improving service delivery for pregnant people and new families!