Someone once told Tracy Humphrey she wasn’t “fully qualified yet”. Instead of shrinking, she used it as fuel and went on to become a professor of maternal health and a senior university leader, while staying deeply connected to what matters most in maternity care: women’s choices, experiences, and outcomes.
We talk through the real-world impact of a boutique midwifery education in the Scottish Highlands, what regional training can teach you that big-city systems often miss, and why continuity of care and one-to-one support in labour still sit at the centre of safe, humane practice. Tracy also shares how her master’s and PhD work grew from everyday clinical frustration with protocol-driven care that wasn’t always evidence-based, and how mentorship and being embedded in strong research teams can turn a clinician into a confident, capable researcher.
The conversation then shifts to induction of labour and the rising global rates. Tracy offers a challenging but practical reframe: the goal is not simply to drive numbers down, but to ensure women are adequately informed, offered real alternatives, and supported through shared decision-making and consent. We also explore her work in global maternal health and policy roles, what brought her to Australia just before Covid, and why midwifery autonomy and funding models shape everything from workforce planning to women’s access to midwife-led care.
If you care about midwifery, maternity services, women-centred care, and evidence-based practice, you’ll get a lot from this one. Subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
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