The Baby Friendly Initiative in practice: A pan London development.

In February 2015, following a year of consultation and collaboration between stakeholders, including eight universities, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) approved a common Midwifery Pan London Practice Assessment Document (MPLPAD) for students studying on pre-registration midwifery education pro-grammes. This presented an ideal opportunity to incorporate the new Unicef UK Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI) Standards to enable students to meet the competencies and to support universities in achieving and maintaining their BFI accreditation. The MPLPAD has been designed around four key competency areas: antenatal, labour and birth, postnatal and neonatal care and infant feeding. The competencies were de-signed to meet the learning outcomes for both the Unicef UK BFI UK standards and the NMC Standards for pre-registration midwifery education (2009) Implementation of the MPLPAD has commenced in eight uni-versities. By September 2016 all students in the London region will be using the document.