This website is intended for healthcare professionals
This website is intended for healthcare professionals
In my visits around the UK and to different parts of the world over recent years, I have been struck by how intractable and pervasive the medicalisation of childbirth has become
A former school friend of mine, who had her first child this year, told me about her anger when an obstetrician referred to her pregnancy as ‘geriatric’. Inappropriate though this term may seem...
September 2016 saw the first ever stillbirth inquest in Northern Ireland (BBC News, 2016) Ever since Cara Rocks was stillborn in 2013, her parents have been seeking answers surrounding her death...
Perinatal mental health has been lingering near the top of the midwifery agenda for a while—at least in terms of rhetoric—but now some of the talk is being translated into action. The Perinatal Mental...
Last month, I was asked to present at the Local Supervising Authority (LSA) summer conference focusing on ‘the midwife in the dock’, from Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) fitness to practise (FtP)...
MAMA Academy is a pregnancy charity empowering women and midwives to help more babies arrive safely We educate expectant mothers on how to keep healthy, and when they should call their midwife for...
According to Holroyd (1971: 628), in March 1916 the author Lytton Strachey attended a tribunal, seeking exemption from conscription on the grounds of conscientious objection (CO) He was asked by a...
Lead is a naturally occurring toxic metal that can harm human health (US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 2016) Fetuses, infants and children are especially vulnerable; low levels of exposure...
The benefits and safety of vaginal birth after primary caesarean section (VBAC) is a subject of considerable interest to midwives, and one which this journal periodically revisits Some of this...
‘The scaling up of breastfeeding to a near universal level could prevent 823 000 annual deaths in children younger than 5 years and 20 000 annual deaths from breast cancer’ (Victora et al, 2016: 475)...
Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a proliferative disorder of the immature retinal vasculature The retina has no blood vessels until around 16 weeks' gestation; the vessels grow out from the optic...
Safe drug administration is an NHS priority and fundamental standard of the Care Quality Commission (CQC, 2016); this is important because midwives' errors in drug administration are reflected in...
In the UK, all parents are offered the newborn infant physical examination (NIPE) for their baby as part of the Child Health Promotion Programme (Department of Health (DH), 2004; National Institute...
The publication of the Francis report (Francis, 2013) led to a recommendation for greater emphasis on interventions to support frontline clinical teams to perform effectively The Patients First...
It has been suggested that the growing proportion of left-handed people—or, more specifically, the greater acknowledgement of left-handedness over the past century—may be the result of fewer...
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