Developing Better Birth Education Curriculum: Internal Factors

Introduction and Interview Background

For this project, I interviewed Brianna McCarty, a curriculum developer for the Brio Birth courses currently being offered privately to expectant parents. Prior to this work, Brianna was a Bradley Method instructor and identified several flaws in that curriculum, including the fact that it was outdated and did not incorporate modern techniques that had since become common practice in hospitals. Research into the Bradley courses confirms this: originating in the 1960s, much of the video content and publication photography reflected that era. While books associated with the Bradley curriculum have been updated within the past five years, a noticeable cultural gap remained.

The Brio Birth courses, by contrast, offer updated instructional videos on the same core themes while also incorporating other birth philosophies, including Lamaze and Birth Into Being. The result is a comprehensive, integrated curriculum that educates parents on both common hospital procedures and alternatives they may utilize during their hospital birth. The reason Brianna was selected for this interview is that she is developing a public-facing curriculum similar to what I ultimately hope to see implemented at a Scottsdale hospital for its nursing staff.

Lessons from the Brio Birth Curriculum

The primary lesson from this interview was that there are significant advantages to correcting and updating outdated curriculum and educational techniques. When creating the Brio curriculum, Brianna utilized the best of both worlds: she followed the standard Bradley framework for structure and length, while also researching current hospital trends and other birth education courses in order to verify and modernize older techniques.

This approach — grounding a new curriculum in an established framework while systematically revising content that no longer reflects current practice — offers a replicable model for curriculum developers in many healthcare education contexts. By retaining proven structural elements and replacing only what had become obsolete, Brianna was able to produce a curriculum that felt familiar yet current.

Scheduling and Time Constraints

Another important aspect of the process that Brianna addressed was the time constraints of the program. The original Bradley Method curriculum required 12 weeks of educational sessions, each lasting two hours. This rigid schedule, she observed, did not meet the time constraints of most modern families with busy professional lives. As a result, Bradley courses had been losing popularity. To address this, Brianna drafted the Brio curriculum to cover a full 24 hours of training while leaving the division of that time open to the instructor and participating families to determine together.

Another concern that Brianna and the other Brio writers addressed was the dated video content of traditional birth education programs. To make the curriculum more engaging, the Brio team produced new media that was significantly more evergreen in its approach, using integrative interviews and contemporary computer technology. The end result was shorter, more visually appealing videos that still conveyed all essential information.

Conclusion

Overall, what I learned from Brianna will be invaluable for future curriculum creation. I learned that conventional curriculum methods do not always fit into the busy, modern world and that flexibility is key when helping a target audience obtain necessary education. Finally, I learned that there is no better incentive for nursing education than that of a happy patient.