MIDIRS is an information resource service for healthcare professionals. We are unable to provide any medical advice. Please contact your midwife or GP if you have any concerns about your pregnancy.
About Us
MIDIRS - or the Midwives Information & Resource Service provides effective information evidence based resources that help maternity health care professionals or students succeed in their professional development and studies.
No matter what your budget or the stage of your career, a MIDIRS subscription will help support you in meeting essential revalidation requirements and your ongoing continuing professional development needs.
Our mission
To be the leading international information resource relating to pregnancy, childbirth and infancy, disseminating this information as widely as possible to assist in the improvement of maternity care.
MIDIRS believes information is key to evidence-based practice. It’s not just about formal research – it’s really about expanding people’s views of what evidence is and helping them to create it, distribute it and use it to improve maternity health services.
Our aim is to create a maternity information and resource service that:
- Is accessible and easy to use
- Is responsive to changes in health care requirements
- Encompasses all types of maternity care practitioners
- Is recognised by educational and clinical institutions
- Contributes to improvements in maternity services globally
- Recognises health care professionals as the providers of evidence.
Our resources
Testimonials
"As a student midwife in the 1980s, all the teaching was from a blackboard, one or two textbooks and a doll and pelvis - there was no suggestion of practice based on research. Things were changing even then, although I didn’t know it at the time. Discovering MIDIRS as a junior midwife was so exciting and empowering – so much information, so easily read, all in the one place. Not only that, but the MIDIRS staff would undertake a literature search for you if you needed it! Midwives now have completely the opposite problem, in a world of information overload, unlimited access to information from everywhere but still little time to sift the knowledge from the noise. MIDIRS still provides an invaluable resource of focused, relevant information helping midwives keep informed and up to date." - Helen Cheyne, RCM Professor of Midwifery
"It’s hard to describe how extraordinary MIDIRS was when it was set up nearly 30 years ago. No-one had previously tried to bring so much information together in a way that was so accessible and international. It truly was innovative and was also a brave step into the unknown – the people who set up MIDIRS had no idea whether it would succeed. For me, that illustrates MIDIRS' great strength – its ability to think into the future, and to imagine what midwives will need in the short and long-term to help them provide better care." - Mary Stewart, Professor of Midwifery
"Although this seems like a lifetime ago, I was on the ARM working group that was the genesis of MIDIRS, going on to work with the genius that was Marianne Scruggs, who was the inspiration behind the final, ground breaking phenomenon that it became. Our vision at the time was to bring current information, research, expertise and opinion together in one place, both as the basis for working with individual women to agree the best possible care for them, and as a powerful tool for system change. Both of these are just as, and perhaps even more, important now as they were three decades ago." - Soo Downe, Professor of Midwifery
"I have subscribed to MIDIRS for most of my career, and as a clinical midwife the electronic database was invaluable when I had to quickly put my finger on that article that would give me the evidence to support childbearing women. As a consultant midwife and head of midwifery, MIDIRS provided me with the means to support change, and to try to improve maternity services in my area. MIDIRS keeps me in touch now, and helps me to share knowledge with others. MIDIRS=MIDWIVES" - Sheena Byrom OBE, Independent Midwifery Advisor
"As a newly qualified midwife, the birth of MIDIRS was a lifeline for me. Knowing where and how to find the latest information was a challenge and MIDIRS offered a quick solution for the busy midwife. Fast forward 25 years (yes really!) and the need is even greater with an estimated 1.8 million scholarly articles being published every year and the high tech, information age offering many other ways of communicating scholarly information. MIDIRS is unique – no other profession has a resource like this." - Vanora Hundley, Professor of Midwifery
"MIDIRS means: enabling midwives to give evidence based thoughtful care." - Lesley Page, Professor of Midwifery
"Thank you so much for your work, it is just precious and so professional! At every single workshop that I teach here in Italy I always talk about your wonderful services!" - Piera Maghella, Tutor
"I recently wrote an essay on obesity, and some of my research that I found helpful I retrieved from MIDIRS journals. Needless to say it certainly paid off as I received a mark of 90%... thank you, MIDIRS!" - Nicola Landeg, 2nd year Student Midwife at Cardiff University
