Week 1 summary

This week

You heard how the maternity system affected one woman – Janet – and saw how her experience is not uncommon, with women facing increased medicalisation, disrupted, rude or inhumane care, and a lack of consideration and collaboration.

Then we looked at the issues that midwives encounter, and how they’re affected by the fragmented maternity system too. Midwives want to provide the best care possible, but are prevented from doing so due to overwork and a system which values managing risk for the health service more than connection and relationships. No wonder stress and burnout are rife, and midwives and other health professionals are leaving the profession at an unsustainable rate.

Clearly, there’s a need for reform, so we looked more deeply at the case for change, and then specifically how that change might look. The Lancet Series on Midwifery provides solid evidence that relationship-based care is the way forward as we work together to come up with a solution to these problems.

Next week

Join us next week to look at relationships in more detail, and start learning about the framework that can be used to implement a relationship-based culture in any maternity care setting around the world.

Over to you

What did you find most interesting or useful this week? Did something stand out to you?