'Assistants are already taking on some of the tasks traditionally completed by midwives. Here the casualty could be the relationships that pregnant women develop, and value enormously.'

摘要

care, some tasks require the skills of highly-trained midwives or doctors; others might be carried out by staff at a lower level. So, to take the most obvious example, measuring blood pressure and testing urine could be delegated to care assistants.The cheapest way of organising antenatal care might be a centralised facility employing a small number of highly-skilled midwives managing a larger number of care assistants and midwives in training, and numerous pregnant women being seen. Such a model is already being introduced on a limited scale postnatally, where care