Anne Bent obituary

Anne Bent’s midwifery occupation was founded on her operate in Nigeria, the place she was sent by the Church Mission Society

My buddy Anne Bent, who has died aged 91, was an influential figure in the teaching of midwives: she drew up the 1st Uk midwifery principles and established the first total-time coaching program for midwifery teachers.

Although she worked primarily in England, Anne’s expertise in Africa in the 1960s laid the foundation for her later achievements. Getting joined the Church Mission Society in 1951, she was posted to Nigeria, in which she became the very first midwife instructor to be registered. She helped redraft regional midwifery legislation and by 1956 had been appointed midwifery superintendent at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Umuahia, exactly where she opened a midwifery training college and lobbied effectively for midwives educated in Nigeria to be in a position to function in the Uk following some additional schooling.

She grew to become matron at Umuahia in 1965, and when civil war broke out two many years later on was possessing to deal with air raids, the therapy of war casualties and the eventual relocation of the hospital to a new base. In late 1969 she took a brief holiday in the United kingdom, for the duration of which the war ended and she was prevented by the Nigerian government from re-getting into the nation she had grown to adore.

So it was that in 1970 Anne became a lecturer at Newcastle on Tyne Polytechnic, the place she established a midwife teachers’ program for the north-east of England – the first such total-time program in England and Wales. In January 1974, she was appointed director of training at the Royal School of Midwives, the place, in collaboration with Sir Iain Chalmers, she established the initial refresher programs for midwives, made to increase awareness of investigation in midwifery practice.

In 1983, Anne was seconded to the newly established United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing Midwifery and Health Going to (UKCC) as its midwifery expert officer and, with her forensic approach to legislation, produced a set of United kingdom midwifery rules that ensured the midwife’s function as an independent practitioner was protected.

Born in Wallasey, Wirral, to Harold and Ethel Bent, and educated at Birkenhead girls’ secondary school, Anne did her nurse instruction for the duration of the 2nd globe war in Wirral and London, and went on to midwifery instruction at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Woolwich, later getting to be a midwifery sister and training as a midwife instructor.

In 1983 Anne was appointed MBE for services to midwifery, and in 1986 she retired from her UKCC submit. To the shock of some close friends, she moved from the relaxed surrounds of her house in the City of London to the edgier environment of Peckham, south London. But the move was exactly what she needed, putting her in the centre of a various and cosmopolitan population, where she rapidly manufactured pals. She was an energetic member of the Copleston Centre church for the rest of her lifestyle.

Anne is survived by her brother, John, and sister, Ida.

Anne Bent obituary