BASIC SUPPORTIVE CARE IN LABOUR: INTERACTION WITH AND AROUND WOMEN IN LABOUR.
Contributors: University Of Manchester (United Kingdom)
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 257
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF.

Much has been written in recent years expressing dissatisfaction with the care women receive during labour. This study endeavours to look at what actually happens during labour.

Data was gathered by means of participant observation. One hundred and thirteen labours were observed: 90 in a consultant unit, 18 in rural GP Units and 5 home confinements. Interviews were also conducted with ante-natal and post-natal women and with midwives.

The role, activities and language of the four major participants; patients, husbands, midwives and doctors were examined and contrasted in the different settings. The pressures of the power structure of their setting were shown in the words and actions of all involved. Who controlled the labour depended upon whose territory the patient laboured on. In the consultant unit the patient was processed as a work object by midwives with little autonomy. The consultant unit was definitely the doctors' territory. The GP Unit was the midwives' territory and the home the territory of those whose home it was.

All the patients stressed their need for information. Tactics used by patients and husbands to gain information were examined as were the ways in which midwives dealt with this search for information, usually without meeting patients' needs. Actions with regard to pain and fear similarly showed staff acting to maintain the control appropriate to the setting rather than meet patients' perceived needs.

Pressures upon patients and midwives were examined, particularly their lack of language and concepts appropriate to labour as they experienced it. Both were therefore reduced to actions not consistent with their own priorities or with their accurate view of each other's needs and values.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-01, Section: B, page: 0075.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER (UNITED KINGDOM), 1987.

School code: 0618.