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Literature Review

Pain and pleasure in the birthing room: understanding the phenomenon of orgasmic birth

Through his exploration of orgasmic states in episodes of human sexual life, obstetrician Michel Odent draws attention to the relationship between what he terms the ‘orgasmogenic cocktail’ of hormones...

Intervention for preventing postpartum depression: a systematic review of studies in Indonesia

The review method in this literature review was informed by systematic review methodology (Khan et al, 2003). The studies in this review had to meet following criteria: participants were women in...

Part 2: COVID-19 and knowledge for midwifery practice—impact and care of the baby

As for part 1, an integrative review methodology was utilised for this paper to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of SARS-CoV-2 infection in babies. The literature was gathered using Arksey and...

Part 1: COVID-19 and knowledge for midwifery practice—impact and care of pregnant women

An integrative review methodology was utilised for this paper as it enables a broad scope to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of COVID-19 infection in pregnancy. The literature was gathered...

What is the significance of hearing a heart murmur during the newborn physical examination?

A critical literature review was chosen because, when conducted with rigour, this can establish what is known or unclear on a topic (Grant and Booth, 2009; Aveyard, 2014). A narrative synthesis...

Ethnic health inequalities in the UK's maternity services: a systematic literature review

Maternal and infant mortality and morbidity have progressively declined in the last decade throughout the world (Moller et al, 2019), and there have been many improvements in the quality of maternity...

Midwives' recommendation of electronic cigarettes as a smoking cessation strategy in pregnancy

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) were first introduced in China in 2004 (Dockrell et al, 2013); however, their use has only become widespread in recent years (Bareham et al, 2016). An e-cigarette...

Lactation after loss: supporting women's decision-making following perinatal death

Perinatal death affects 54 out of every 1 000 births in the UK (Draper et al, 2019) and is classically defined as a stillbirth (where a baby is born in the UK with no signs of life after 24 completed...

Autonomy and its impact on midwifery practice

Autonomy is not a new concept in midwifery Although not explicit, the term autonomy has been embedded in the definition of a midwife (International Confederation of Midwives [ICM], 2011) Reiterated in...

Fairy tale midwifery ten years on: facilitating the transition to newly qualified midwife

Seminal work (Kramer, 1974) indicated that newly qualified practitioners experience a reality shock on initiation of first post, which is supported by subsequent literature (Maben and Macleod-Clark,...

How do risk management principles fit in with the reality of clinical midwifery?

Risk assessment and management is extremely important in midwifery However, it is unclear how its principles fit with day-to-day clinical midwifery practice While midwives are the inherent leaders of...

Management of first trimester pregnancy loss: mifepristone plus misoprostol versus misoprostol alone

Miscarriage occurs in 20% of all pregnancies (Fernlund et al, 2018) and medical management using misoprostol is now a popular treatment option as opposed to surgical intervention Current research...

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