Childbirth International’s certification programs (Birth Doula, Postpartum Doula, Childbirth Educator, and Lactation Counselor) include four modules: Communication Skills; Physiology; Professional Skills; and Business of Birth. Each module has a number of units or topics relevant to your work as a birth and lactation professional. Within a unit, you’ll read the course materials, complete self-guided reflective and critical thinking activities, and view external readings and videos. There may also be additional discussion forums, assignments, quick quizzes, and tests, which are required if you choose to complete the certification requirements.
The Communication Skills module is included in all four certification programs. If you are studying more than one course, this module is only completed once and does not need to be repeated for subsequent courses.
Topics in Communication Skills
Being able to communicate effectively with clients, their families, and their healthcare providers is an essential part of working with birthing and new families which is why it is part of all of our certification training programs. The topics covered in the communication skills module include:
- effective communication
- language & communication
- active listening skills
- diversity & cultural safety
- evidence-informed care & informed choice
- grief & loss
- reflective practice & debriefing
An explanation for each unit within the Communication Skills module can be found below, together with a table outlining the competencies you will build in each unit.
Effective Communication
When working with clients and with the family and caregivers supporting them, you’ll be striving for open and honest communication that fosters trust. This unit explores the essential components of communication, both verbal and non-verbal, and the power of effective communication. You’ll learn about the main obstacles to effective communication, using empathy instead of sympathy, and becoming skilled at using open questions to help your clients explore their needs and preferences.
Certification activities in this unit
- Getting to Know You introduction to your trainer
- Peer group discussions on effective communication
- Quick quiz on effective communication and open & closed questions
Essential Knowledge | Contextual Understanding | Attitudes and Behaviors |
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Language & Communication
In this unit, you’ll consider the effect of language on the perception and understanding of birth and the postpartum experience. The way people perceive language affects how they understand concepts. As a birth and lactation professional, your confidence in using explicit language, body language, and your understanding of the cultural context of language, all affect the messages you send, and can also affect the way you present information to your clients. You’ll learn about the impact of risk-based and benefits-based language, and develop your skills in establishing empathy and language that works toward eliminating health disparities for the clients you work with.
Certification activities in this unit
- Peer group discussion on giving advice and recommendations
Essential Knowledge | Contextual Understanding | Attitudes and Behaviors |
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Active Listening Skills
Sometimes clients don’t want information or input – they may just need a listening ear. When others are given the space to speak freely, they may identify their own misconceptions, fears, or the steps they need to take. Active listening skills modeled by yourself can help clients to overcome differences between themselves, family members, and their caregivers, enabling them to avoid conflict and resolve challenging situations when they occur.
Certification activities in this unit
- Analyze your own listening skills and set goals for communication
Essential Knowledge | Contextual Understanding | Attitudes and Behaviors |
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Diversity & Cultural Safety
As a birth and lactation professional, you’re likely to find yourself working with clients, colleagues, or caregivers who have different cultures and belief systems from you. To enable you to build effective working relationships, you will explore your own values and biases, and reflect on how to work with diverse groups of people even when you don’t agree with each other or have very different approaches to pregnancy, birth, lactation, and parenting. It’s also helpful to know where your boundaries are, whether there are situations you feel you can’t support, and how you’ll communicate these to clients. In this unit, you’ll also look at the concept of cultural safety, implicit bias, and how power balances and systemic structures influence the healthcare that an individual receives and can lead to disparities in outcomes for families.
Certification activities in this unit
- Critically reflect on presenter bias
Essential Knowledge | Contextual Understanding | Attitudes and Behaviors |
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Evidence-Informed Care & Informed Choice
Evidence-informed care integrates clinical judgment with the best available research available for clients to make decisions about what is the best course of action for themselves or their baby. The use of reliable research is a key component, but the term “evidence-informed care” also allows for the judgment of the individual healthcare provider in communicating the general principles of research evidence to an individual client. You’ll be able to understand the structure of research and develop the skills to communicate evidence, or lack of evidence, to clients in a balanced and non-threatening way. You’ll also explore the importance of informed choice and the components that ensure a client is giving informed consent when medical interventions are proposed.
Certification activities in this unit
- Evaluate how an author relates their work to the evidence and presents that evidence
Essential Knowledge | Contextual Understanding | Attitudes and Behaviors |
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Grief & Loss
Supporting families through loss and grief is one of the most challenging areas of working as a birth and lactation professional. This is one area that students and experienced practitioners alike often dread. In this unit, you’ll explore theories of grief to give an overview of the ways the grief process is understood, and look in some detail at individual forms of loss, such as miscarriage, stillbirth, illness, or fertility problems. You’ll examine how families experience such losses, and the issues they may face in the aftermath. You’ll also look at how you can support clients in maintaining control over their decisions and making their experience an empowering one, before, during, and after a loss, even if their experience is one they would never have chosen. Finally, you’ll think about the importance of self-care when supporting a family through loss.
Essential Knowledge | Contextual Understanding | Attitudes and Behaviors |
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Reflective Practice & Debriefing
Reflection is a process where you not only at what happened in a situation but also why. Reflection enables us to go beyond the surface of our experiences and to explore the reasons why we and others acted in certain ways, what influenced us, what choices we made, and whether those choices supported our goals. With reflection, we can see a whole range of alternatives we may not have identified at the time of the event in question and can examine why we didn’t identify or choose those alternatives. Reflection helps us to be aware of our power, even if we realize that we didn’t use it. Reflection benefits us not only in our personal and professional lives but also leads us to begin asking different, more effective, questions of our clients, providing them with a vision of a more empowered way of being. In this unit, you’ll develop a strong understanding of reflective practice and how it can enhance your experiences and those of your clients while providing you with clear strategies for supporting clients in debriefing using reflective practice techniques.
Certification activities in this unit
- Reflective case studies on working with clients through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum
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