Midwifery led care

Tink · #1 (**permalink**) 20-Nov-2007, 22:25

Im doing a presentation on midwifery led care and the physical mental and emotional pros and cons for both the women and midwives.

Has anyone read any good articales or does anyone have access to their trust guidlines, that they could send me??

Thanks

MadwifeMcCann · #2 (**permalink**) 25-Nov-2007, 21:26

Hiya Tink... here are a few references that may be of use with relation to the emotional labour of midwives. Hope they help. Also pasted some info I had do for group session work:

My understanding of emotional labour is the management of emotions and feelings in accordance with ‘feeling rules’ which relate to the norms of displaying emotion within the relevant profession involved, in order to uphold a professional appearance. Some of the most common emotions that are involved and disguised may be anger, frustration, disillusionment, anxiety. These all require ‘emotional work’ to overcome.

Burnout is a term used to describe the experience of long term exhaustion and diminished interest, particularly in someone’s career. Exhaustion may be physical and/or emotional and is the resulting factor of long term stress or dissipation. It is not merely stress but more a complex reaction to stress when a person’s inner resources become overstretched and inadequate for managing the tasks and situations the individual faces. The individual is unable to meet constant demands and becomes increasingly overwhelmed and depleted of energy. As well as exhaustion, burnout is characterised by an increasingly negative attitude towards work and life. Individuals may feel overworked, underappreciated, confused about expectations and priorities, concerned about job security, overcommitted with responsibilities and resentful about duties that are not commensurate with pay. Debilitating sadness, anger or indifference can set in and individuals may lose the interest or motivation that led them to take on the particular job in the first place.
Hunter (2004) discusses how hospital-based midwives often become very disillusioned with an emphasis on successful completion of tasks, in order to ensure the physical safety of mothers and babies and ensuring that few tasks were left for the next shift. The key characteristics of hospital midwifery identified in this study were the dominance of organisational needs, the subsequent focus on task completion and the significance of relationships with colleagues rather than client. This is far from the ‘with women’ ideology that most midwives strive for. According to Hunt (2004) many hospital based midwives feel more like nurses, carrying out doctors tasks than being the autonomous, with-woman professionals that they set out to be.

Bolton S.C. (2000) Who cares? Offering emotion work as a `gift' in the nursing labour process. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 32(3), 580-586

Hunter, B, & Deery, R. (2005) Building our knowledge about emotion work in midwifery combining and comparing findings from two different research studies. Evidence Based Midwifery, 3(1), 10-15

Hunter, B. (2004) Conflicting ideologies as a source of emotion work in midwifery. Midwifery, 20, 261-272

James, N. (1989) Emotional labour: skill and work in the social regulation of feelings, Sociological Review, 37 (1): 15-42.

Sandall, J. (1997) Midwives, Burnout and Continuity of Care. British Journal of Midwifery, 5, 106-111

Smith P, & Gray B (2001) Emotional Labour of Nursing revisited: Caring and Learning 2000. Nurse Education in Practice: 1, 42-49

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/burnout_signs_symptoms.htm#difference

Tink · #3 (**permalink**) 26-Nov-2007, 16:15

Oh thank you very much i will look into those. Thank you!