Shelley Macmillan

Position: Lecturer
Discipline: Midwifery
Location: Gippsland Campus, Building 2w, Room 132
Phone: (03) 5122 6348
Email: s.macmillan@federation.edu.au

Qualifications

  • Graduate Certificate of Mental Health – Latrobe University - 2022
  • Master of Science (Midwifery) – University of Hull – 2016
  • Graduate Diploma Midwifery – University of Hull – 2012
  • Bachelor of Nursing – Avondale University - 2002

Teaching

Programs

  • Bachelor of Nursing/Bachelor of Midwifery
  • Graduate Diploma of Midwifery

Courses

  • Midwifery Practice Foundations (MIDBM1002)
  • Midwifery Care for Women with Complex Needs (MIDGD6203)

Biography

Shelley is a midwife and nurse working in the Institute of Health and Wellbeing. Shelley joined Federation University Australia in 2022, moving from clinical practice into academia. Prior this the move, Shelley was a Clinical Midwife Specialist at Latrobe Regional Health, relocating from the UK. In the UK, Shelley worked in a hospital funded homebirth service, providing care within a continuity of care model. Shelley has also worked within the perioperative field, while also working as a Clinical Educator for a global tissue viability and wound care company Smith and Nephew. Shelley is a member of the Australian College of Midwives and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for The Practicing Midwife (Australian Edition).

Areas of expertise

Shelley has focused on midwifery practice most recently, working as a Clinical Speciality Midwife in a busy Antenatal Clinic and Maternity Unit of a regional hospital in central Gippsland. Shelley has a strong interest in informed and individualised care, antenatal education, physiological birth, and perinatal mental health. Shelley enjoys engaging and challenging future midwives to ask questions, reflect on experiences and identify ways to challenge our societal attitudes, while building community confidence in birth as a normal physiological process.

Shelley is interested in ways to encourage women to make confident choices that inspire and empower, have positive outcomes within the birth timeline, and improve family health from a wider perspective. Shelley has an interest in promoting empathy as a core component of maternity care and exploring the role of communication in women’s experiences of birth trauma. Shelley is interested in expanding the role of the midwife to care more holistically for women with perinatal mental health problems.

Shelley is a hypnobirthing instructor, childbirth educator and advocate of complimentary therapies used in collaboration with routine maternity care.

Research interests

  • Perinatal mental health
  • Midwife-led continuity of care models
  • The role of empathy and compassion in maternity care
  • Understanding labour physiology, positioning and mobility to increase spontaneous vaginal birth

Associations

  • The Australian College of Midwives 2018 – Present
  • Australian Nursing and Midwifery Association 2018 - Present