Background: Research in maternity care is often conducted in mixed low and high-risk or solely high-risk populations. This limits generalizability to the low-risk population of pregnant women receiving care from Dutch midwives. To address this limitation, 24 midwifery practices in the Netherlands bring …

Background: Despite evidence supporting the safety of vaginal birth after caesarean section (VBAC), rates are low in many countries. Methods: OptiBIRTH investigated the effects of a woman-centred intervention designed to increase VBAC rates through an unblinded cluster randomised trial in 15 maternity …

Background Variations in childbirth interventions may indicate inappropriate use. Most variation studies are limited by the lack of adjustments for maternal characteristics and do not investigate variations in adverse outcomes. This study aims to explore regional variations in the Netherlands and their …

Background: Research on maternity care often focuses on factors that prevent good communication and collaboration and rarely includes important stakeholders – parents – as co-researchers. To understand how professionals and parents in Dutch maternity care accomplish constructive communication and collaboration, …

Background: Twinning collaborations, where two groups — from educational institutions, hospitals or towns — work together cross-culturally on joint goals, are increasingly common worldwide. Pairing up individuals, so-called twin pairs, is thought to contribute to successful collaboration in twinning …

Aim: Midwives are expected to identify and help resolve ethics problems that arise in practice, skills that are presumed to be taught in midwifery educational programs. In this study, we explore how midwives recognize ethical dilemmas in clinical practice and examine the sources of their ethics education. Methods: …

Women want positive birth experiences with high quality maternity care that is neither too much, too soon, nor too little, too late. Research confirms the effectiveness of midwifery care, and the midwifery approach to birth as physiologic may counter the upward trend of the unnecessary medicalization …

Background: The dynamics of maternal and newborn care challenge midwifery education programs to keep up-to-date. To prepare for their professional role in a changing world, role models are important agents for student learning. Objective: To explore the ways in which Dutch and Icelandic midwifery …

Background Woman-centred care is a philosophy for midwifery care management of the childbearing woman. There is no mutually recognised internalised way in midwifery to provide woman-centred care. Objective To reveal midwives’ distinct perspectives about woman-centred care. Methods A Q-methodology …

Background: Pregnant women use childbirth reality programs to prepare themselves for childbirth. It is unknown how shared decision-making in intrapartum midwifery care is represented in televised birth. We aimed to explore the portrayal of shared decision-making during labour and birth in lifetime documentary …