Paige McDaniel, Certified Nurse Midwife

In honor of National Midwifery Week, we met up with Paige McDaniel, one of HealthNet’s many excellent midwives! Paige recently traveled to Liberia, West Africa to conduct a needs assessment and help nursing staff in Liberia update protocols. Check out Paige’s incredible story about her trip to West Africa and delivering twin baby boys!

Q: Tell us about your recent trip to Liberia, West Africa?

A: I was in Monrovia, the capitol of Liberia for two weeks at the beginning of September with my faculty advisor from IU’s School of Nursing, getting started on the required Inquiry Project for my DNP program. I hope to transition my career into global midwifery education and development, and for this project, I plan to implement a midwifery education intervention around the issue of postpartum hemorrhage management. Liberia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world because of bleeding during and after childbirth, so the need is very great.

Q: Walk us through a day in your shoes in Liberia.

A: For this first trip, I was working under my advisor as part of her larger USAID-funded grant to develop nursing and midwifery education in Liberia. My purpose on this visit was to conduct a clinical practice needs assessment pilot study to assess the clinical knowledge of the hospital nurses and midwives, and help the nursing staff there begin to refine outdated institutional protocols and identify clinical areas where new protocols need to be developed. I was not there as a patient provider per se, and much of my time was spent working with nursing and midwifery leadership at the country’s only tertiary facility, John F Kennedy Memorial Hospital. Specifically, I worked with midwife and nurse leaders to develop modules to assess staff competencies in three clinical areas, including a simulation involving postpartum hemorrhage for the hospital midwives.

Q: What was the most satisfying part about your trip?

A: I think the most satisfying part of my time in Monrovia was simply the relationships I built with the nurses and midwives at the hospital, as well as other Liberians I was privileged to meet. The country recently emerged from a brutal, 13 year Civil War so in addition to having to completely rebuild the country’s infrastructure, many people are still quite reserved and often guarded. Everyone I met was always welcoming and hospitable, but by the end of the two weeks, I knew that I had made some genuine friendships.  I will be back in Monrovia a few more times for this project, so truly getting to know some of the people there was very important to me.

Incidentally, I also had the surprise pleasure delivering twin boys as I was pulled into the delivery room one day during my first week by one of the midwives! This is something many CNMs practicing in the United States don’t have the opportunity to do, so I very much enjoyed this professional “first”! 

Q: What is the one thing you wish you could tell others about being a midwife?

A: Being a midwife is absolutely the most rewarding profession that I can imagine for myself. Regardless if I ultimately find myself in direct clinical care “catching babies”, educating a new generation of midwives in the classroom, or working in public policy to help strengthen health care for women and children, I will be forever honored to stand next to my sister midwives as we engage in the work of our hearts.

For more information on HealthNet midwives, please click here or call a location near you.

Ready to spend some time outside, now that the weather is warming up? Learn how to keep your kids sun safe.

Most of us Midwesterners have been bundled up all winter. A day at the park or zoo can provide kids the kind of intermittent sun exposure that leads to sunburn.

The amount of sunburn your children get now, before they turn 18, increases their risk for skin cancer, particularly melanoma.

Did you know that only onesevere sunburn in childhood can more than double the chances of skin cancer developing in adulthood?  With every sunburn comes a decrease in the skin’s natural ability to protect itself and an exponentially higher likelihood that skin disease will occur later in life.

Keep your kids burn-free this spring:

1. Make sure your sun safety practices are age appropriate.
2. Choose the right sunscreen.
3. Find the right sunglasses.
4. Pick the safest time and the place.
5. Skip the tanning bed!

You can help our Indy community be sun smart too.

• Teach your kids a fun sun safety game to play with their friends!
• Help your child’s school be sunwise. Learn about guidelines for school programs that strive to prevent skin cancer.
• Babies, with their delicate skin, are particularly vulnerable sun exposure. Each year, HealthNet Health Promotions offers Baby Be Sun Smart, a sun education program for mothers of newborns. This year, we will be distributing sun safety kits to HealthNet moms of babies between 0-3 months at well-baby visits. Moms receive a bilingual sun safety education flyer, a hand-made baby bonnet, and a small bottle of sunscreen.

Want to help a mom who can’t afford sunscreen for her baby? A donation of $75 to HealthNet Health Promotions will provide sunscreen for 75 sun safety kits.  Thanks for making a difference in our community!

As parents, we sometimes are so busy taking care of our children that we lose track of some of the details of their lives.

Take 5 minutes and test yourself with this 16-question quiz recommended by our Better Indy Babies and Healthy Families staff. It will help you to see if you are having enough conversations, spending enough time, and showing enough interest to share in your child’s life each day. A parent needs to know his or her child better than anyone else in the world!

1. If your child could paint his room any color, what would it be?
2. What does your child want to be when he or she grows up?
3. Who is your child’s best friend?
4. Does your child think he or she is too big or small for his age?
5. What does your child think others think about him?
6. What does your child like best about school? Why?
7. What does your child dislike about school? Why?
8. Who outside your family has influenced your child the most?
9. Who is your child’s hero?
10. How does your child feel about you?
11. What would your child change about his family?
12. Does your child think you are fair?
13. If your child had $5 today, what would he or she buy?
14. What is your child’s favorite toy?
15. What would your child change about you?
16. If asked, “What do you do well?” what would your child say?

Find a time to sit down with your child, check your answers and see how well you did!

Helping Vulnerable Kids and Families Succeed

ALL parents need reminders from time to time on how to be the best mom or dad they can be for their kids. HealthNet’s Better Indy Babies and Healthy Families teams work with at-risk Indy parents during the critical early years of their children’s lives. They help increase parent knowledge of early childhood development, improve parenting practices, provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues, prevent child abuse and neglect and increase children’s school readiness.  Kudos to these programs for making Indy a healthier place for children!

It will be two years at HealthNet for me on July 6th! My how time flies.

Since working here, I have seen 4 health center openings, a National Health Center Week, a couple Better Indy Babies/Healthy Families graduations, and been able to see all of the different aspects of our Homeless Initiative Program.  And, I always feel bad when talking about the health centers in general terms because there are SO MANY services provided within their walls.

Some days, I feel as if it is easy to market this fantastic organization because there are so many things going on all the time.  But, other days, that same reason makes it feel hard because sometimes we just can’t mention EVERYTHING.

This month’s blog theme – OUR HEALTHNET – is an effort to try and mention everything, but at the end of the month, we won’t catch it all.  We had posts from Behavioral Health staff, Health Promotions staff, BIBs/Healthy Families Staff, Homeless Initiative staff, and we will have a few more from the marketing department.  That will leave out:

• Pediatrics
• Family Practice
• Internal Medicine
• OB/GYN and Nurse Midwives
• Foot Care
• X-Ray
• Dental
• Vision
• Social Services
• Family Planning
• School-Based Services
• Financial Planning

And I’m probably still leaving a few departments out.  So, my call to action to you is to subscribe to this blog.  You can either enter your email address in the top right or click here.  But, by subscribing you will be able to stay up to date on all that OUR HEALTHNET has to offer.

Have any specific questions about HealthNet or any of the services provided??
Want to get involved?  Comment below!  I’ll get back to you ASAP.

You knew your baby would cry. But, did you know how frustrating that crying would be when you tried everything to comfort your baby, and she just kept crying?

Dealing with a crying baby can be very hard, and parents often don’t realize just how frustrating it is until they are in that situation. No one thinks they will shake their infant, but research shows that crying is the number one trigger leading caregivers to violently shake and injure babies.

Poverty can also be a contributing factor to shaken-baby syndrome. The stressful effects of a faltering economy, skyrocketing unemployment and precarious personal finances can be dire. People take up smoking or use alcohol to cope, they become depressed or suicidal, and they develop stress-related illnesses like heart disease. Now researchers report that the harm may be spreading to children too.

The fact is that crying—including long bouts of inconsolable crying—is normal developmental behavior in infants. The problem is not the crying, it’s how caregivers respond to it.

The “Happiest Baby on the Block” program teaches parents the mystery of colic with the discovery of a calming reflex – the incredible “off-switch” for infant crying and on switch for baby sleep that can soothe most fussy babies in minutes and add 1-3 hours to a baby’s sleep.

HealthNet Health Promotions’ certified teachers offer free classes in these techniques for low-income parents living in Indianapolis.  If you’d like to support a new mom with a “Happiest Baby” gift basket including a swaddling blanket, soothing sounds CD and helpful tips, please  consider making a donation to HealthNet Health Promotions today!