Collective action for the development of national standards for midwifery education in Australia

This article describes a sequence of events that led to the development of national standards for the accreditation of Australian midwifery education programmes for initial registration. This process occurred within a climate of polarised opinions about the value of the introduction of three-year degree programmes for midwives who are not nurses (known as the BMid in Australia) and concerns about the invisibility of midwifery within nursing regulation, education, policy and nomenclature. Concerted efforts to develop standards to inform the introduction of BMid programmes through a process of collective action are described. This involved arguing successfully for the positioning of midwifery as a separate profession from nursing, with a need for its own discreet regulation.