(Miriam Brown is a midwife in the region)

The province wants to make it easier for foreign-trained midwives to receive accreditation when they arrive in Manitoba.

The College of Midwives of Manitoba will now offer midwifery assessment and gap training, rather than forcing internationally educated midwives to restart their training.

"I think it's just a fabulous opportunity to be able to attract midwives to the province and enable increased support and services that we're able to offer within the region," says Karen Ilchyna, who serves as the Regional Director of Primary Health Care Integration for Southern Health-Santé Sud. "A lot of women in their antepartum are interested in working through prenatal/postnatal delivery with a midwife. There is a high interest and an increasing demand as people become familiar with the service."

The new training process is part of Manitoba Health's effort to fill midwife shortages in the province. Ilchyna says the move will help stabilize the midwifery workforce in Manitoba.

"Currently we're able to educate staff through the University College of the North and now with the new program to recruit from other jurisdictions in Canada," says Ilchyna. "So it provides an opportunity to capture another resource to attain midwives to be trained to work in Manitoba."

Ilchyna says they have already had one internationally-trained midwife show interest in the new program. She says the increased interest in midwifery is a combination of people immigrating to the region and good word of mouth from people who are already living here.