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I am afraid Ellen Blix is too busy preparing for Christmas at home in Hammerfest, and far too polite to sing her own praises, so I am writing to tell everyone on this list who may not already know, that she has been awarded her doctorate from the Nordic School of Public Health in Gothenburg, Sweden after an impressive defense of her dissertation in Tromsų, Norway, on Tuesday 19 December. This was the first time a doctoral candidate from Nordic had held their viva somewhere else, and it was a truly fitting occasion for such a precedent, since so many of the people involved in Ellen's work are from Northern Norway. Not many midwives have had the satisfaction of seeing their published work actually be influential in changing policy, and certainly not work done so early in their research careers, but we in Norway have Ellen and her co-authors to thank for the revised guidelines now in effect, in which routine doorstep CTGs are no longer recommended for healthy women with normal pregnancies. I believe the revised UK NICE guidelines also acknowledged the systematic review by Blix et al, of studies on the labor admission test, that comprises the fourth of five published papers to come out of her doctoral research. Another Norwegian midwife, Eva Tegnander of Trondheim, also got her PhD this year, on detection of heart defects on routine scanning, for a grand total of three midwives with doctoral degrees (Gunnhild Blaaka was the first), none of them from the largest city, Oslo. Hopefully that will change soon too. Enough crowing for one post - but this was too good a chance to let slip by. Cheers Rachel Myr Kristiansand, Norway