Patient Advocacy Masterclass

When I ask new doulas what it means to be a patient advocate, many answer, "it means to be the patient's voice." But it is not our role as birth workers to be anyone else's voice for them! That is another way to displace power from a birth giver, to suppose we can somehow speak for them better than they can speak for themselves. But how do we teach clients to advocate for themselves within the rigid power structure of the medical care model? In a world which has rigidly socialized women, trans and non binary people to agree, fawn and submit? And what can we do when a client is advocating for themselves clearly but their wishes are still being ignored or bulldozed? Where are the edges when our clients are unconscious or in too much pain to speak to give or revoke consent? 

In this workshop you will learn all of this and more. You will come out of this workshop a more highly skilled birth worker, prepared to protect yourself and your own boundaries, while holding expert space for your client to express and hold theirs. This is essential learning for all doulas and care workers. Without clarity on this topic, we walk ourselves and our clients into trauma over and over again and feel helpless, like lambs to the slaughter, hinging our hopes and well being on others in the space over whom we have no control. 

Holding space for self advocacy means understanding the nuances of how trauma happens and exactly how to help clients avoid it by using their OWN voices to set the course of their births.