Martha Nicholson

I’m interested in how midwives and nurses are trained to provide person-centred abortion care, information and support. Globally, nurses and midwives facilitate pregnant people’s access to abortion care. My research focuses on the context of Northern Ireland, where the Abortion Legislation introduced in 2021 permits nurses and midwives to provide abortion care. I explore the individual, institutional and policy level factors that influence how abortion training is delivered in educational settings, and how this affects nurses and midwives’ roles in abortion care and support. To do this, I am working with midwifery and nursing associations and centres of education to collect qualitative and quantitative data on how midwives and nurses are trained and mentored to support pregnant people’s choices, and the factors affecting delivery of the training. 

I graduated with a Master's in Public Health from Karolinska Institutet in 2017. Since then, I have been working in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for non-governmental organisations MSI Reproductive Choices and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) as an Evidence Advisor. During this time, I evaluated abortion care training workshops, conducted formative research on community preferences for abortion care and developed results frameworks for monitoring and evaluating abortion care. My PhD research project is funded through the ESRC and is a collaborative studentship with IPPF and the Open University.