Nil nocere: doing no harm as an important guiding principle within maternity care

摘要

The practice of maternity care today is awash with traditions, recommendations and guidelines which promote the 'doing' of a plethora of things to pregnant and birthing women and their babies, often on a routine, population-wide basis. The last few decades have seen -a proliferation of screening tests, prophylactic measures and interventions. Within the mainstream maternity services, these have often been introduced alongside cuts and constraints which have reduced the amount of time that a woman and her caregiver are able to spend having individualised discussions. This has had a significant impact upon the experiences of both providers and recipients of care and has been criticised by many as being unaligned with the traditional definition of midwifery as 'being with' women (Hunter 2004, Deery 2010).