BACKGROUND Due to the debilitating effects of severe labour pains, labour pain management continues to be an important subject that requires much attention. Thus, this study sought to gain a detailed insight into the experiences of midwives on pharmacological and non-pharmacological labour pain management strategies in a resource limited clinical context. METHODS A descriptive exploratory qua...

This paper presents the traditions of assisted childbirth in the Brazilian state of Bahia in the 19th Century and develops the hypothesis that two obstetrical traditions coexisted in the capital, Salvador, namely the doctor-midwives--who used technical resources and knowledge acquired from obstetrics as a medical specialty--and the traditional midwives, whose know-how was purely of an empirical...

Purpose: To investigate the impact of conducting Structured Antenatal Psychosocial Assessments (SAPSA) on midwives’ emotional wellbeing. The SAPSA includes screening and assessment tools for domestic violence, childhood trauma, drug and alcohol use, depression, and vulnerability factors. Design: Qualitative descriptive design utilising focus group interviews Setting: Two hospitals in NSW undert...

OBJECTIVE To identify potential risk or mishap in the system of intrapartum care, relating to the deployment of midwives. DESIGN Prospective semistructured observational study. SETTING Labour wards of seven maternity units in the north west of England. PARTICIPANTS All midwives working on the labour ward during the observation period in 2000. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE "Latent failures" withi...

OBJECTIVE In this study the changes in attitude of midwives towards their work following completion of the Maternal Care Manual of the Perinatal Education Programme (PEP), were determined. METHOD A prospective, controlled trial was performed in a study, and two control towns in a region where PEP had not previously been used. All midwives caring for pregnant women in the three towns were incl...

This paper presents a new method for estimating piecewise-smooth optical flow. We propose a global optimization formulation with three-frame matching and local variation and develop an efficient technique to minimize the resultant global energy. This technique takes advantage of local gradient, global gradient and global matching methods and alleviates their limitations. Experiments on various ...

OBJECTIVE to research the role of midwives in Australia from the perspectives of women and midwives. This study was part of a commissioned national research project to articulate the scope of practice of Australian midwives and to develop national competency standards to assist midwives to deliver safe and competent midwifery care. DESIGN a multi-method approach with qualitative data collecte...

Purpose: To further develop an ergonomic birthing support for increasing comfortable postures for midwives and mothers during deliveries. Methods and Results: First, the prototype of the birthing support and six birthing postures were tested with 8 midwives, 2 physicians, and 10 pregnant women in the last month of their pregnancy using visual analogue scales (VASs) and the System Usability Scal...