BACKGROUND Regular weighing in pregnant women is not currently recommended in many countries but has been suggested to prevent excessive gestational weight gain. This study aimed to establish the feasibility and acceptability of incorporating regular weighing, setting maximum weight gain targets and feedback by community midwives. METHODS Low risk pregnant women cared for by eight community m...

BACKGROUND Graduated driver licensing (GDL) adds an intermediate stage to driver licensing between the learner permit and full licensure stages that is intended to ameliorate the high risk of novice drivers. OBJECTIVES To assess the contribution of various elements of GDL to reduction in the crash rates of young novice drivers. METHODS An extensive review of the literature was undertaken to...

BACKGROUND In the Netherlands, midwives are autonomous medical practitioners and 78% of pregnant women start their maternity care with a primary care midwife. Scientific research to support evidence-based practice in primary care midwifery in the Netherlands has been sparse. This paper describes the research design and methodology of the multicenter multidisciplinary prospective DELIVER study w...

OBJECTIVE to assess the knowledge of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection among Dutch primary care midwives, and clinical approaches to informing women about CMV. DESIGN cross-sectional study, using self-administered questionnaires. PARTICIPANTS 330 Dutch primary care midwives. SETTING primary midwifery care practices across the Netherlands. MAIN OUTCOME Midwives' knowledge of CMV transmissi...

Objective: to explore barriers to the involvement of community midwives in identifying women in early pregnancy as potential participants in the XX, a randomised controlled trial of a new intervention to provide health and parenting support to potentially vulnerable women. Design: descriptive qualitative investigation using semi-structured audio-recoded interviews. Setting: community midwifery ...

for social rather than medical reasons—i.e., in terms of their age, education, ethnicity, marital status, inner-city and rural residence and ability to pay for services.3 This patient profile suggests that midwives are primarily being used to fill health care gaps among the economically disadvantaged. New Medicaid reimbursement regulations could be partially responsible for this relationship,4 ...

Pregnancy offers an opportunity for midwives to recognise and respond to women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). However, most antenatal care interventions have been conducted in private specialist services in high-income countries and do not address the structural and cultural realities of developing country settings. We report on an exploratory qualitative study conducted in anten...

BACKGROUND Non-western women living in the Netherlands are diverse in origin, which implies diversity in their needs and expectations for midwifery care. Furthermore, it has also been shown that non-western women make suboptimal use of prenatal care. Midwives may therefore face difficulties when caring for these clients. OBJECTIVE The main objective of our study was to explore Dutch primary c...

In order to improve the knowledge and skills of midwives at health facilities and those based in villages in South Kalimantan, Indonesia, three in-service training programmes were carried out during 1995-98. A scheme used for both facility and village midwives included training at training centres, peer review and continuing education. One restricted to village midwives involved an internship p...