About Us
Inspired by osteopathy
Whombs is run by passionate practitioners and education / research professionals who want to share information about the osteopathic contribution in the care of women and children. It is a clinical special interest group for osteopaths, is a public information service and is an advocacy organisation for research, education, standards and the wider scope of osteopathic practice. We aim to support individual practitioners, but also to raise awareness and to act as a portal for inter-professional education, collaboration and research.
We wish to see osteopaths working in these fields to be recognised for their additional skills and clinical experiences, and consider that they are working in an extended / enhanced capacity to the general competence framework of qualified practitioners.
There is a wide general scope of practice for osteopaths, and pre-registration and undergraduate programmes are not able to include all the knowledge complexity and additional skills needed to work in an extended / enhanced role. Practitioners working with women and children need additional skill sets and an additional layer of competence and capability - and we hope are Certification Marks are a step towards seeing these skills acknowledged, and to support wider public awareness of osteopathic practice in an enhanced / extended capacity.
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For more information about our concepts for enhanced / extended roles,
Our Story
Having been in practice (currently or historically) as osteopaths in the UK, we feel it is timely to support women's health services and paediatric and maternity services for women, buy highlighting the osteopathic contribution and its potential. We feel that the public and interprofessional awareness of osteopathy, its standards, its competence and its research framework should be enhanced, and this is our main aim - to get women and those who care for them talking about the osteopathic contribution - what it is and what underpins it. We hope you find this website helpful, and please check back, as we are continuing to add to it as we develop and grow as an organisation.
whombs is a trading name of the visceral and obstetric association, a not for profit community organisation