Due to the devoted work of health professionals like Ethel Margaret Burnside, the midwife that acted pioneer work at her time and researchers in the field over the last 50 years, we now know a lot more than we used to know about the way health and disease go from one generation to the next and the next. Prof Dr Mechthild Gross presents people and work of significant value as she speaks about the importance of just being the best we can be when at work, seeing our work as a humanity serving vocation that may be used -when time comes- as valueable resource for understanding how our ancestors can influence our present health, thus providing understanding about what could possibly be done to safeguard the well being of future generations.
Dr. Mechthild M. Gross is a trained nurse midwife and obtained a Masters degree in Psychology from the University of Constance. After her PhD in 2000 (Bremen University), she joined the Hanover Medical School, in Hanover Germany, as a research fellow and a consultant midwife. Since then she has set up a Midwifery Research and Education Unit and has published widely in the area of midwifery. She also has a long-standing interest in the academic training of midwives. Following an ICM workshop on midwifery research in Tuebingen, Germany in 1989, she founded and has chaired the annual research conferences for German speaking midwives for 18 years. Currently, she still works as a practising midwife in a tertiary hospital, devoting half of her time to research. Additionally, she is involved in teaching medical students, and preparing for midwife-led models of care. Since September 2009, she is the Head of the European Masters of Science in Midwifery at the Hanover Medical School. In 2010, her postdoctoral thesis (Venia legendi) was accepted by the Hanover Medical School.