I am a midwife, an herbalist, and a functional medicine practitioner.
I have been practicing within women’s health and education for over 20 years, 9 of them in obstetric alone. I have taught nurses, doctors, midwives, traditional birth assistants and students of those fields in midwifery skills and obstetric emergencies.
As a midwife, I have attended births at homes, birthing centres and hospitals in Canada and the States including Montreal, Vancouver, New York and Los Angeles. I have also practiced in the most precarious conditions in remote areas of Northern Canada with the Inuit communities, of Cameroon, Uganda and in Kenya (where I lived for 5 years).
As a midwife working in deferent settings and scopes of care, I have had full autonomous practice, with continuity of care, in which I diagnosed, prescribed and administer ed drugs. I have had full medical responsibility of my patients in prenatal, labor & delivery and postpartum including the medical responsibility for the newborn until 12 weeks of life. I have had full hospital privileges in high-risk facilities, including in BC Women’s Hospital and Health Centre, and I have cared as a first assistant in c/s, trained to repair 4th degree tears, in women wellness, including family planning and IUD insertion, intrauterine insemination IUI and in obstetric emergency skills, including advanced neonatal resuscitation.
I have been active within the areas of women’s rights since 2001, first as a rape crisis counsellor and then as a health care provider. I have been an advocate against child sexual abuse and as a health care provider, I have supervised and participated in the collection of rape kit data and worked in collaboration with psychologists and law enforcement agencies, in conjunction with advocacy groups and provided post-rape care. As part of my involvement within this field and in association with CONNECT, a New York City based non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention of domestic violence and promotion of gender justice, I co-led a panel back in the early 2000s on the effect of sexual abuse on pregnancy, birth and post-partum, which led to the creation of a training protocol for doulas that care for victims of sexual abuse. In Canada, I was involved with Streetwork, an organization working with at-risk clientele primarily from First Nation communities. Most of our clients dealt with substance abuse, street level prostitution, low income and/or living on the street. As part of my work with Streetwork’s “Her Program”, I taught emergency obstetrical skills to nurses directly involved with the pregnant women and helped develop programs based on an harm reduction approach.
On an other note, I has been practicing different forms of yoga since 1992 and received my first teacher training at laughing lotus in NYC in 2001. I developed and lead teacher trainings, workshops and retreats including prenatal yoga teacher trainings. I studied the ancient texts of Theravada Buddhism, mostly with monastic teachers and sat at and lead mediation classes and retreats since the early 2000is.
Beyond my formal University program of 4 years in Midwifery at l’université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, I have also earned two undergraduate certificates in Communication and Psychology, in addition to a one-year program on child sexual abuse. I have attended a graduate-level program from Sherbrook University in Restorative Justice. In 2016, I earn a specialized graduated diplomat in Clinical Global Health from the Université du Québec and I am presently a master candidate at Johns Hopkins University in Education for Health Professional.
I was Faculty in the Medical Department of the University of British Colombia as both a clinician and instructor, and thought a course on “Obstetrics in Remote Areas” in the Clinical Global Health Program of the Université du Québec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. In 2012, I authored a chapter addressing mothers’ health in a book approved by the Society of Obstetrician and Gynaecologist of Canada about physical activities during pregnancy and the postpartum period. I am also Faculty with The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of the UK with whom I taught Obstetric Emergencies and Fistula Prevention in Uganda and I am part of a team of health practitioners who provide education and clitoral reconstructive surgery for women who underwent Female Genital Mutilation.
In 2019, I co-founded AKNA, a Knowledge Broker Firm in maternal and newborn health, with whom I consulter for Kenyatta University in creating a direct entry midwifery program, help practice and institution to update their guidelines to the latest evidences and with a women centred care approached as its corp philosophy. I am was a lead clinical consultant for FreMo Medical and Birthing Center and the education director for the maternal and newborn health program at SAIDIA in Samburu County both in Kenya. And in I am the co-founder of Ecole Quantik Doula, a full spectrum doula school, who quickly became the largest school of doula in the Francophony.
Having worked in remote areas and in traditional settings where access to emergency care was often not available, I got the opportunity to develop a balance practice between herbal medicine, traditional wisdom, strong manual skills, and allopathic medicine. I also had to develop an acute sense of preventive medicine where I believe the art of midwifery lies.
My wish is to use my considerable experience to develop educational programs and guidelines while maintaining a clinical practice. Telemedicine and online training has been in the forefront for my vision as I see it as a tool to democratization of access an empowerment.
Well-trained midwives and medical staffs are crucial in the quest to reduce maternal and child mortality around the world, but well informed women and communities is just as important. My philosophy as a clinician and an educator is based on the premise that an evidence-based, women centred care not only preserves the dignity of women, but also the one of the practitioner.
