Midwife-led units
| • the RCM believes that women are getting increasingly being
offered a choice of care in a midwife
led unit. These units are often small especially if they stand apart from a
main hospital and often deliver around 300 to 400 women a year. Women
accessing these units will find a personalised service, will often be looked
after by midwives they know from the antenatal period, will always have
access to water for pain relief as well as birth balls etc, will use intermittent
fetal monitoring and will be able to mobilise in labour. The midwifery led
units that stand alongside obstetric units often deliver higher numbers of
women and the service may be less personalised but women accessing these
services will meet midwives who have a philosophy of promoting normal birth
and again will experience birth without the use of technology |
|
| • the evidence is that women who are able to choose such
services evaluate their care highly and experience lower levels of
intervention. I will refer more to this later on. |
|
| • the downside to women of choosing these service models is
that they will have to transfer if there is a problem in labour. |