I was really interested to see a feature in a recent edition of the British Medical Journal entitled “Why religious belief should be declared as a competing interest”, in which Richard Smith and Jane Blazeby suggested that people’s faith can…
Category: Research Updates
More evidence on how to keep birth normal
Large Carbetocin trial published
The results of a large trial on Carbetocin have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Asking different questions…
An important paper has been published in Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care this month, in which expert maternity care researchers from around the world have come together to call for a new approach to research. In ‘Asking different questions: A…
Further confirmation of home birth safety
A systematic review and meta-analysis has further confirmed the safety of home birth for healthy women, even if they are having their first baby. After comparing data from births planned at home birth, in birth centres and in hospital, researchers…
Expert midwives and perineal care during birth
A study published in Women and Birth has offered further insight into the knowledge and skills used by expert midwives in keeping women’s perineums intact during birth. Led by Cecily Begley, the researchers interviewed midwives in New Zealand and Ireland…
New systematic review on chlorhexidine
It feels rather fitting to have spotted this new systematic review and meta-analysis in the same week that we are running our Group B Strep Explored online course! Freely availably in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, the paper by Bell et…
Why do women value midwifery care?
This month has seen the publication of a study which is really important to women, midwives and everybody involved in maternity care, because it looks even more deeply at a really vital question: what it is that women value in…
Evidence of the importance of listening to women
A research study which described and explored women’s ‘gut instincts’ during pregnancy has provided further support for the idea that it is vital to listen to women and to pay attention to other ways of knowing such as intuition (Warland…
Another way of supporting women who wish to decline
A paper published in an Australian midwifery journal has proposed a woman-centred framework for documentation and communication when women decide to decline aspects of maternity care. This is an important issue, as the authors note in the background to their…