Outline the changes in midwifery care during the past ten years.
A radical and unexpected report, The Winterton Report (1991), found that many women were dissatisfied with the maternity services offered by the NHS in the UK. This was the first time the government had conducted a report looking at maternity services using sociological factors, and eventually led to the development of the ‘Expert Maternity Group’. The report found that there was a lot of repetition within the system and suggested that the expertise of the midwife should be utilised, to provide a much more suitable service for the pregnant woman. Following on from the Winterton Report, the Department of Health, in 1993, published the document Changing Childbirth, which was designed to highlight why women were dissatisfied with the maternity services, and make recommendations as to how it could be improved. This report led to many changes which have brought maternity care to what it is today. The over-riding themes of the report were that continuity of care is essential to women, and must be flexible to meet the needs of the individual which can only be achieved with effective communication. Overall, it was concluded that UK maternity services should take a ‘woman-centred’ approach rather than ‘service-centred’. There have since been a number of different initiatives implemented which encompass the issues indicated in Changing Childbirth, providing a service which is much more responsive to it’s client’s needs; however, due to a limited word count only a small percentage of these measures can be reviewed in this assignment.
The key factor in improving the maternity services was to offer all woman accessibility to a diverse range of antenatal, postpartum and postnatal care. The midwife’s role changed to become one of empowering women to have the care that they want. For the midwife to offer the care exactly how the woman wants, a relationship of trust and understanding must develop...