Midwives

MIDWIVES AND SAFER MOTHERHOOD draws its title from the Safe Motherhood Initiative (WHO, UNFPA, World Bank, 1987). This book provides a unique insight into the ways in which midwives may be involved in the achievement of safer motherhood, especially a reduction in maternal mortality and morbidity. Divided into four key areas, it explores: Research for Safer Motherhood, Midwives' Changing Roles, Midwifery Education, and The Midwifery Profession Internationally. The international team of contributors offers a rich and varied perspective on the changing role of midwives worldwide.

This book examines the principles and realities of ethics in midwifery practice today. It explains basic ethical theory, looking at how dilemmas occur and the ethical bases on which conflicts can be resolved. Through a series of case studies, options and issues for consideration are reviewed, particularly in areas of increasing concern and debate such as confidentiality, autonomy, screening, abortion, assisted conception and withholding treatment. This book is valuable to all students and practicing midwives who need to understand the principles and practice of ethics, especially how to apply ethical thought and action in their own day-to-day work.

Based on her 12 year study of a free-standing birth center, Turkel analyzes the medical model of childbirth in contrast to the midwifery model. In the medical model of birth, women are defined as patients and birth takes place in hospitals where women have little, if any, control over their experience. The midwifery model views birth as a healthy process where midwives act as teachers and guides for women during pregnancy and birth, helping women and their families to shape and define their experience to meet their needs and expectations. Under existing legal and cultural circumstances, free-standing birth centers face a dilemma. They must continually accomodate the medical model while trying to maintain the midwifery model and give women an option to home birth or to hospital birth.

This collection of essays brings together the best of Oakley's work on the sociology of women's health. It focuses on four main themes - divisions of labour, motherhood, technology and methodology - and considers what it is to be women facing the often impersonal world of twentieth-century medicine.

A woman's childbirth care choices have a profound effect on her pregnancy and childbirth experience. Today, some pregnant women have three different options to choose from: obstetrical care and a hospital birth, a midwife-assisted birth in a hospital, and a midwife-assisted birth at an out-of-hospital birthing center. By using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this volume examines how and why 200 women made their choices, how satisfied they were with the care they received, and the impact of their choices on the availability of options in the future. Although most women in the U.S. still choose an obstetrician and a hospital setting, the number of women who choose to be assisted by a Certified Nurse Midwife is growing with the result that this profession is acquiring new strength and jurisdiction over childbirth care.

Covering all periods from Ancient Greece to the present day, this richly illustrated history of medicine offers information and insight on a wide variety of topics. The great milestones of medical history - among them the discovery of the circulation of the blood, vaccination against smallpox, the invention of the X-ray, the development of penicillin - are charted. They are set against the social context of medicine, with accounts of more neglected areas such as patterns of epidemics, the emergence of the medical profession, the history of nursing, unorthodox medical practice, the spread of western medicine beyond Europe and the US, and the patient's viewpoint. Authoritatively and accessibly written by a team of twenty distinguished medical historians and including a helpful glossary, a chronology, and a full index, this is a fascinating introduction to medicine in the west from its beginnings to the present day.

Much recent work on the history of colonial medicine argues that medicine was the handmaiden of colonial power and of capitalism. Dr Bell challenges this interpretation through careful investigation of the complicated relationship between medicine, politics, and capital in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Subverting the accepted wisdom that colonial medicine consisted primarily of white male doctors treating black patients, Dr Bell highlights the important role of women and of African and non-European practitioners of Western medicine. She moves beyond the realm of medical practice to consider the relationship between medical research and colonial power. And she argues that a new international medicine emerged during the interwar period, modifying and even supplanting existing colonial relationships. Frontiers of Medicine examines the physical, epidemiological, and professional boundaries that endlessly preoccupies colonial officials. Emphasising the tenuousness of colonial power, it includes chapters on midwifery training and female circumcision, on health and racial ideology, and on the quest to find the yellow fever virus in East Africa. Accepted wisdom maintains that colonial medicine consisted primarily of white doctors treating black patients, that it was mainly about medical practice, and that it was driven by colonial relationships. Dr Bell subverts these notions with detailed evidence of the participation of women and native Africans as trained medical personnel in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and demonstrates the tenuousness of colonial power in practice. There are chapters on midwifery training and female circumcision, on health and racial ideology, and on the quest to find yellow fever virus in East Africa. Dr Bell also investigates the relationship between colonial power and medical research, arguing that a new international medicine emerged during the inter-war period.

Unlike most histories of the medical profession between 1750 and 1850, which focus on a small handful of famous doctors and their discoveries, this book concentrates on the neglected but far larger group of rank and file practitioners: the surgeon-apothecaries of the late 18th century and the general practitioners of the early 19th century. Delving into an array of manuscript sources, Loudon examines their social and economic status, their background and training, their scientific methods and medical challenges, and their patients and pay-scales. He demonstrates that they actually faced unparalleled intraprofessional rivalry in an overcrowded profession during these years -- the effects of which are still seen in the structure of Britain's medical establishment today.

From childbirth and baptism through to courtship, weddings, and funerals, every stage in the life-cycle of Tudor and Stuart England was accompanied by ritual. Even under the protestantism of the reformed Church, the spiritual and social dramas of birth, marriage, and death were graced with elaborate ceremony. Powerful and controversial protocols were in operation, shaped and altered by the influences of the Reformation, the Revolution, and the Restoration. Each of the major rituals was potentially an arena for argument, ambiguity, and dissent. Ideally, as classic rites of passage, these ceremonies worked to bring people together. But they also set up traps into which people could stumble, and tests which not everybody could pass. In practice, ritual performance revealed frictions and fractures that everyday local discourse attempted to hide or to heal. Using fascinating first-hand evidence, David Cressy shows how the making and remaking of ritual formed part of a continuing debate, sometimes strained and occasionally acrimonious, which exposed the raw nerves of society in the midst of great historical events. In doing so, he vividly brings to life the common experiences of living and dying in Tudor and Stuart England.

Connor and Samuel explore the present state of a range of healing traditions in their Asian locales. The peoples examined include relatively remote populations such as the Iban of Sarawak, the Temiar of Malaysia, and the Sasak of Lomboko, as well as rural South Indians and Malays, the people of South Korea's modern industrial cities, and Tibetans both in Chinese-controlled Tibet and in the refugee settlements of North India.