Dr Jane Sandall
Professor of Midwifery and Women's Health
Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery
King's College, London
57 Waterloo Road, London
SE1 8WA
Tel: 020 7848 3605
Fax: 020 7848 3506
e-mail:[log in to unmask]
http://www.kcl.ac.uk
Moderator Midwifery-Research
for ICM Research Standing Committee
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/midwifery-research.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Newburn" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 11:37 PM
Subject: you are all very quiet! & the nature of birth interventions
The NCT is preparing a response to the DoH 'NHS Performance Assessment
framework'document and I would urge you all to do the same re maternity
outcomes of greatest priority. I'd welcome your views on the question we
are pondering: we would liek the Govt to collect data on 'straightforward
vaginal births' (or similar) and would need therefore to define our terms.
it is possible to draw the line at a variety of places along a continuum of
no/minimum intervention - full on everthing you can imagine intervention.
The qwuestion is, strategically what definition is most useful? (ENCA
issued a statement defining 'normal birth' to include a physiological thrid
stage (I was at the meeting and did not oppose this, though on reflection I
would not want the UK stats for 'straightforward physiological birth to be
limited to only those without a managed thrid stage as the numbers would be
small and the evidence is interpreted by many to mean that a managed third
stage is beneficial).I don't want to have unnecesary fights with DoH onthe
wisdomof collecting such data.
Suggest: spontaneous onset of labour (what about ARM durign labour ?
exclude all or not? doesn't stop the labour being 'straightforward', so I
would not exclude if used for augmentation in a labour that began
spontaneously.) spontaneous birthing of baby. Include pethidine but exclude
epidural. Ignore third stage.
Comments please.
(THis is especially urgent in the light of terminology used by Dr Foster -
'non caesarean' for all vaginal births.)
mary newburn
Head of Policy Research at NCT
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