Just a few words to introduce myself.
I work as a midwife lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and have
recently completed a piece of research on midwives' perception of risk.
The hypothesis was developed following the analysis of the low risk women's
data in four neighbouring maternity units which showed that higher
intervention rates led to higher rates of abnormal delivery. The
hypothesis was that midwives working in higher intervention units would
have a higher perception of risk than midwives working in lower
intervention units. That was supported by the evidence, but more
remarkably, midwives generally had a much higher perception of risk than
reality for low risk women who progressed in labour without intervention,
but a lower perception of risk than reality for interventions such as
epidural analgesia.
Marianne Mead
Marianne Mead
Principal Lecturer and Research Leader
Department of Midwifery and Child
University of Hertfordshire
Tel 01707 285286
Fax 01707 285299
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