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A legacy from Sheila Kitzinger: Continuity of care is crucial

Over many years, my friend Sheila Kitzinger and I talked about the importance of women receiving care from one or a small group of midwives whom they could get to know and trust over time, which...

Coping with inequity: All in a day's work

My early years were not exactly traditional. My parents were actors, so the nature of their employment was sporadic. When I was a baby, my mother took a temporary job and my father looked after me....

Don't tell me I can't change the world

Recently, I had a privilege of attending the British Journal of Midwifery Awards, held in Manchester on 8 February I was even more privileged to be awarded joint 2nd place in the Innovation in...

Plus ça change: Problems with memory and the importance of documentation (again)

A sure sign of ageing (call it experience, if you will) is the realisation that ‘we've been here before’. In 1997, I published an article in this journal concerning practitioners' recall of events...

Clinicians in the classroom: The bereavement midwife

One in 200 births in the UK ends in stillbirth, and of those, 1 in 3 occurs at term (37+ weeks' gestation) According to MBRRACE-UK (Draper et al, 2015: 7), ‘although there has been a small reduction...

Optimising women's experiences and outcomes

In my career as a midwife, I have been to many midwifery conferences, but this year's BJM conference was the most valuable It gathered together some of the best speakers in the midwifery profession...

Can maternity care move beyond risk? Implications for midwifery as a profession

Changes in society, including higher levels of education in the population and higher expectations of health services, have resulted in a belief that risk can be controlled or even prevented, and...

Exploring the value of group supervision in midwifery: Part 1

Following the findings from three investigations into complaints from families relating to local midwifery supervision and regulation at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, the...

Mindfulness in maternity: Evaluation of a course for midwives

There is increasing literature to suggest that mindfulness-based interventions may address a variety of psychological problems (eg Grossman et al, 2004; Dimidjian and Goodman, 2009; Duncan and...

Deliberately unassisted birth in Ireland: Understanding choice in Irish maternity services

In Ireland, some women who are unable to access a midwife-attended homebirth are choosing to give birth at home without assistance This paper describes the experience of four such women, whose stories...

The effect of maternal position at birth on perineal trauma: A systematic review

Genital tract sepsis is now the leading cause of direct maternal death in the UK, with the incidence rising since 2006 (Cantwell et al, 2011) Perineal trauma can increase the risk of puerperal...

An audit and trial aiming to reduce the rate of surgical site infections for women having a caesarean section

Although birth by caesarean section (CS) is a common procedure, there are a number of potential complications, of which one is surgical site infection (SSI) (Gould, 2007; Wloch et al, 2012) Mortality...

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