Kudos to Jill Doctoroff and Dr. Julie Thorne of the Canadian Abortion Hospital Network (CAHN), as well as the UBC CART-GRAC team, for their work and collaboration on a new Continuing Professional Development learning course available through UBC CPD. The course, Abortion Care After the First Trimester: A Hospital-Based Guide for Health Professionals, is aimed at hospital-based care providers and offers research-grounded information on providing later abortion care.
The course is designed to help clinicians build their knowledge on abortion care that can be provided after the first trimester in Canada. Participants will develop more confidence in supporting patients who require later abortion care.
The course is made of five modules that help learners build not only an understanding of key care processes, but also of:
- The safety and potential impact of different abortion care methodologies
- The full continuum of later abortion care, from informed consent and patient counselling to pre-, intra-, and post-abortion care
- Reasons why later abortion care may be necessary and the various barriers to access that may influence patients’ ability to get the care they need
- Legal and medical frameworks underpinning abortion care
- How professional obligations and personal values can intersect with this type of care and how to manage this intersection with compassion
This CPD course is part of a larger national network of training opportunities, funded by Health Canada as part of the CART Access project. Any of the course’s modules can be taken on their own, or as part of the more in-depth curriculum.
Thecourse responds to a need identified by CAHN’s needs assessment, which sought to identify barriers to access and gaps in abortion care services across Canada. Through community engagement, the project identified significant gaps in training around abortion care for the entire team involved in providing care. Expertise in later abortion care is sparsely distributed and poorly connected across the Canadian healthcare landscape. Quality care exists and is available, but there is little communication between jurisdictions in terms of what can be offered when, to whom, and how.
This course seeks to remedy this by offering training on the topic to hospital-based clinicians (as a primary audience) and to any other care providers who may be involved in abortion care.
Eligible clinicians can claim CPD/CME credits for completing the course, which is free.
Further reading and resources
We all have a Role to Play: Increasing Access to Abortion Care in Canada (CART | UBC CPD)
Course that provides clinicians with the foundations of abortion care including its position as part of reproductive care, the barriers for people who need to access it and the stigma that has surrounded it.
Interactive online tool created through the Reproductive Choices Lab
The Fireweed Project seeks to remove barriers to accessing abortion for Indigenous women, trans, and 2-spirit people.