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Literature Review

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...

Fairy tale midwifery 10 years on: re-evaluating the lived experiences of newly qualified midwives

At the point of registration, the newly qualified midwife (NQM) is a competent novice practitioner in low-risk midwifery care, and is expected to refine and develop skills and confidence in caring for...

The relationship between interpersonal trauma and substance misuse in pregnancy

Background There is a strong body of evidence supporting associations between interpersonal trauma (IPT) and substance use; however, this tends to focus on associations between childhood trauma and...

Staying together: mothers and babies in prison

The number of women imprisoned across the world is increasing According to the World Female Imprisonment List, the number of female prisoners has increased worldwide by 53% since 2000 (Walmsley,...

Using a transcervical Foley catheter to enhance normality for induction of labour

In 2016–2017, 294% of women in the UK underwent a medical induction of labour (NHS Digital, 2017) This is an increase from the 149% in 2014–2015 (Hospital Episode Statistics Analysis, Health and...

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