GOLD Speakers

Jocelyn Toohill, RM, RN, PhD

• Country: Australia

Biography:

Dr Toohill is a research fellow in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University. Her PhD focused on a midwife psycho-education intervention for women with childbirth fear. In a randomised controlled trial she tested the efficacy of midwife counselling in women who screened high for childbirth fear. She found following midwife counselling that women’s confidence for birth had increased and childbirth fear levels decreased. She currently manages a project to translate this evidence to routine practice at the Gold Coast University Hospital.  A midwife of more than 25 years, she was co-lead on the Queensland Normal Birth Clinical Guideline introduced in 2012, and is currently investigating enablers and barriers to use of this guideline. She is passionate about support for women to achieve normal birth, set up a publicly funded birth centre in 2006, the home of midwifery group practice on the Gold Coast.