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Editorial

What the general election means for midwives

Prime Minister Theresa May surprised the country in April with the announcement of a snap general election, set to be held on 8 June 2017 (BBC, 2017). A recent survey showed that 55% of citizens are...

Midwifery and the act of looking forward

I became the new editor of the British Journal of Midwifery just days after the March issue was published, so I had a long time to look forward to releasing an issue of my own. The most important...

Perinatal mental health is still everyone's business

Pregnancy and birth in the UK are safer than ever. But while the maternal mortality rate has declined steadily since 2003, there has been no significant reduction in maternal suicide. It is now the...

Midwives show strength in the face of adversity

In recent weeks, maternity professionals and service users have rallied in support of independent midwives, after the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) decided that the indemnity scheme provided by...

The benefits of a universal approach

Christmas has been and gone, but there are more gifts to come for pregnant women in Scotland: 2017 sees the launch of a Finnish-style baby box scheme across the country. A 3-month pilot in Orkney and...

Respect for women's reproductive rights

‘Sometimes it's hard to be a woman,’ Tammy Wynette once sang, before going on to advise that one should forgive one's husband for being unfaithful because ‘he's just a man’ and thus, she seems to...

Whatever happened to safety in numbers?

England is a safe place to have a baby. So says secretary of state for health Jeremy Hunt, in the foreword to the new report from the Department of Health's (DH, 2016) Maternity Safety Programme Team....

Advancing attitudes towards maternal age

A former school friend of mine, who had her first child this year, told me about her anger when an obstetrician referred to her pregnancy as ‘geriatric’. Inappropriate though this term may seem...

A welcome boost for perinatal mental health

Perinatal mental health has been lingering near the top of the midwifery agenda for a while—at least in terms of rhetoric—but now some of the talk is being translated into action. The Perinatal Mental...

‘Do more with less’ must have its limits

Along with ‘thinking outside the box’ and ‘touching base’, another annoying phrase that corporate jargon has inflicted on the English language is ‘do more with less’. This little gem has been...

Instability in the wake of the EU referendum

In the aftermath of the referendum on EU membership, uncertainty reigns. As I write this, members of the Conservative Party are considering leadership options following the resignation of David...

The personal side of public health

Despite talk of ‘woman-centred care’, much of the care provided by the NHS is based on guidelines directed at the whole population, rather than tailored to the individual. In time-pressured maternity...

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