Teaching midwives homeopathy—A Belgian pilot project

Abstract

Introduction
Recent Belgian legislation generated the need for homeopathic training of midwives. The Centre of Classical Homeopathy (CKH) offered a 50-hours course in homeopathy as a pilot project within the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program of Thomas More College.
Methods
The curriculum was designed to combine a minimum of homeopathic philosophical underpinning with appropriate clinical exercises within the limited training hours available. Eight participants followed the course. Evaluation of the course followed in the last session through a self-completed questionnaire with closed questions on course content and transfer to practice and open questions on didactics and the organisation of the course. Recommendations for the future were also queried.
Results
Although the learning objectives were met, participants provided useful feedback regarding content and method for the future organisation of the course. They felt more topics should be included such as, the postpartum period. They suggested supplementing the material from the current training with more practice and cases, and expanding the course to a full year’s training, allowing more time between sessions for processing the material. To use homeopathy for acute prescribing, more training on repertorisation techniques and materia medica knowledge would be required.
Conclusions
Training midwives in homeopathy requires considerably more time than the 50 contact hours stipulated by law and would best be offered as interactive sessions providing powerful concrete case examples, spread over the course of one full year to allow for integration of the material into practice.