Maternal health inequalities: focusing on Black pregnant women

Decolonisation of global conferences: unfinished business for women's health advocates

Despite talk of ‘bottom up’ strategy, global health conferences often still perpetuate a mechanism of ‘top down’ agenda-setting by wealthy nations (Smith, 2006; Horton, 2019; Khorsand et al, 2022)....

R v Noor: a landmark case in female genital mutilation prosecution

The WHO (2024) classifies female genital mutilation into four types. Type 1 is the partial or total removal of the clitoral glans (the external and visible part of the clitoris, which is a sensitive...

Cultivating patient safety culture in midwifery practices through incident reporting

Incident reporting is more than a historical account of an incident; it is a proactive step toward identifying solutions and fostering an environment of learning (Hamed and Konstantinidis, 2022)....

Using a novel approach to explore women's caesarean birth experience

Phenomenology can describe how an event, such as birth, is understood in the landscape of surrounding experiences and overall context (Dodgson, 2023). The subjective and contextual approach suits...

Digitally enabled perinatal mental health programmes: a Scottish perspective

In Scotland, the ‘Matrix’ (NHS Education for Scotland, 2024) was formally launched on a new digital platform on 1 November 2023. It is designed to support evidence-based practice for the delivery of...

Digitally enabled perinatal mental health programmes' role in contemporary maternity care

Families need prompt access to evidence-based treatment to improve outcomes. Adversity faced by infants who have a mentally unwell parent, although not universal, can create lifelong challenges, but...

Risk assessments and ethnicity in maternity care: looking through the wrong end of the telescope?

The Caucasian (male) body as the norm has long been noted by Black feminists (Hull et al, 1982; Crenshaw, 1988; 1991; Gishen and Lokugamage, 2019), and even the human genome project is replicating...

Building strong foundations in leadership and management for midwifery students

There are a limited number of studies concerning midwifery leadership and management, even more so in terms of studies that relate to students. In addition, midwifery leadership and management are...

The importance of reflexivity in data collection methods for qualitative midwifery research

In the field of nursing and midwifery research, interviews serve as a commonly used and reliable method for data collection. Nevertheless, novice researchers may not fully grasp the complexities of...

A midwife's reflective writing in lactation and grief

On 24 April 2019, I gave birth to my second baby, Hugo, who was diagnosed with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia during early pregnancy. Despite our preparations, Hugo's condition was severe, and he...

Initial care during miscarriage in the emergency department: a discussion of international context

Abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding are typical signs of pregnancy complications, and usually prompt women to seek healthcare (Mwilike et al, 2018). In Brunei Darussalam, women experiencing a...