Birth Settings in America


Book Description

The delivery of high quality and equitable care for both mothers and newborns is complex and requires efforts across many sectors. The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world, yet outcomes are worse than other high-resource countries, and even worse for Black and Native American women. There are a variety of factors that influence childbirth, including social determinants such as income, educational levels, access to care, financing, transportation, structural racism and geographic variability in birth settings. It is important to reevaluate the United States' approach to maternal and newborn care through the lens of these factors across multiple disciplines. Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice reviews and evaluates maternal and newborn care in the United States, the epidemiology of social and clinical risks in pregnancy and childbirth, birth settings research, and access to and choice of birth settings.




Freestanding Birth Centers


Book Description

Written for graduate students and professionals in the fields of midwifery, women’s health, and public health, this book explores the freestanding birth center model in the United States from its conception by pioneering midwives and others in the early 1970s to the present day. Compared to the hospital-based birth model, the freestanding birth center offers a well-documented, healthier, more cost-effective, and more humane way to care for women and newborns, consistent with the goals of the Affordable Care Act. This rapidly expanding model of care has many positive implications for high-quality, individualized care and birth outcomes across the United States. Written by U.S. leaders in midwifery, Freestanding Birth Centers: Innovation, Evidence, Optimal Outcomes offers a comprehensive guide to the evolving role of birth centers, clinical and cost outcomes, regulatory and legal issues, provider and accreditation issues, and the future of the birth center model. Woven throughout the text are descriptions of "exemplar" birth centers representing diverse geographical, business, and service models. These cases illustrate the possibilities for expansion and replication of this model of care. Key Features Provides a thorough history of the birth center movement from its inception through future expansion of the model Serves as an essential resource with up-to-date evidence on clinical and cost outcomes Includes case studies linking the unique service focus of individual birth centers to the associated sections of the book Provides practical and comprehensive coverage of all issues involved in running a U.S. birth center




The Future of the Nursing Workforce in the United States


Book Description

The Future of the Nursing Workforce in the United States: Data, Trends and Implications provides a timely, comprehensive, and integrated body of data supported by rich discussion of the forces shaping the nursing workforce in the US. Using plain, jargon free language, the book identifies and describes the key changes in the current nursing workforce and provide insights about what is likely to develop in the future. The Future of the Nursing Workforce offers an in-depth discussion of specific policy options to help employers, educators, and policymakers design and implement actions aimed at strengthening the current and future RN workforce. The only book of its kind, this renowned author team presents extensive data, exhibits and tables on the nurse labor market, how the composition of the workforce is evolving, changes occurring in the work environment where nurses practice their profession, and on the publics opinion of the nursing profession.




Evidence-based Maternity Care


Book Description

"Evidence-based maternity care uses the best available research on the safety and effectiveness of specific practices to help guide maternity care decisions and to facilitate optimal outcomes in mothers and newborns."-- From foreword.




Catching Babies


Book Description

Childbirth is a quintessential family event that simultaneously holds great promise and runs the risk of danger. By the late nineteenth century, the birthing room had become a place where the goals of the new scientific professional could be demonstrated, but where traditional female knowledge was in conflict with the new ways. Here the choice of attendants and their practices defined gender, ethnicity, class, and the role of the professional. Using the methodology of social science theory, particularly quantitative statistical analysis and historical demography, Charlotte Borst examines the effect of gender, culture, and class on the transition to physician-attended childbirth. Earlier studies have focused on physician opposition to midwifery, devoting little attention to the training for and actual practice of midwifery. As a result, until now we knew little about the actual conditions of the midwife's education and practice. Catching Babies is the first study to examine the move to physician-attended birth within the context of a particular community. It focuses on four representative counties in Wisconsin to study both midwives and physicians within the context of their community. Borst finds that midwives were not pushed out of practice by elitist or misogynist obstetricians. Instead, their traditional, artisanal skills ceased to be valued by a society that had come to embrace the model of disinterested, professional science. The community that had previously hired midwives turned to physicians who shared ethnic and cultural values with the very midwives they replaced.




Infancy


Book Description

This comprehensive, accessible, market-leading infant development (prenatal-age 3) core text for infant and early childhood development weaves together research, theory, and current issues of diversity of culture for students seeking to engage in the lives of our youngest children with understanding and compassion.




Birth Ambassadors


Book Description

Birth Ambassadors documents the social history of the emergence of doula care in the United States. What are doulas and where did they come from? Why do women become doulas? What does it mean to be a doula? Birth Ambassadors is the only book to fully answer these questions by connecting narrative accounts with critical sociological analysis of the dilemmas and issues embodied in doula history and practice. Based on historical research and interviews with currently practicing doulas and leaders in the field, Birth Ambassadors argues that the doula role is underpinned by ideological commitments to several overlapping and, at times, conflicting ideas around childbirth. These include an understanding of pregnancy and birth from the midwifery model, a belief in women's right to make informed choices regarding their health care, the need for patient/consumer advocacy and unconditional emotional support for women's choices about their births. Birth Ambassadors explores how this constellation of beliefs within doula practice represents an innovative yet problematic response within the maternity reform movement to empower women during and after childbirth. Doulas are ambassadors to the world of birth, highlighting women's emotional experience of birth in settings where beliefs and practices of the participants (the woman, her family, the nurses, midwives and obstetricians) are sometimes in conflict. For doulas to fulfill their goal of entering mainstream maternity care, they and their organizations face critical challenges.




Reproducing Race


Book Description

Reproducing Race, an ethnography of pregnancy and birth at a large New York City public hospital, explores the role of race in the medical setting. Khiara M. Bridges investigates how race—commonly seen as biological in the medical world—is socially constructed among women dependent on the public healthcare system for prenatal care and childbirth. Bridges argues that race carries powerful material consequences for these women even when it is not explicitly named, showing how they are marginalized by the practices and assumptions of the clinic staff. Deftly weaving ethnographic evidence into broader discussions of Medicaid and racial disparities in infant and maternal mortality, Bridges shines new light on the politics of healthcare for the poor, demonstrating how the "medicalization" of social problems reproduces racial stereotypes and governs the bodies of poor women of color.




Clinical Case Studies for the Family Nurse Practitioner


Book Description

Clinical Case Studies for the Family Nurse Practitioner is a key resource for advanced practice nurses and graduate students seeking to test their skills in assessing, diagnosing, and managing cases in family and primary care. Composed of more than 70 cases ranging from common to unique, the book compiles years of experience from experts in the field. It is organized chronologically, presenting cases from neonatal to geriatric care in a standard approach built on the SOAP format. This includes differential diagnosis and a series of critical thinking questions ideal for self-assessment or classroom use.




A History of Midwifery in the United States


Book Description

Written by two of the professionís most prominent midwifery leaders, this authoritative history of midwifery in the United States, from the 1600s to the present, is distinguished by its vast breadth and depth. The book spans the historical evolution of midwives as respected, autonomous health care workers and midwifery as a profession, and considers the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities for this discipline as enduring motifs throughout the text. It surveys the roots of midwifery, the beginnings of professional practice, the founding of educational institutions and professional organizations, and entry pathways into the profession. Woven throughout the text are such themes as the close link between midwives and the communities in which they live, their view of pregnancy and birth as normal life events, their efforts to promote health and prevent illness, and their dedication to being with women wherever they may be and in whatever health condition and circumstances they may be in. The text examines the threats to midwifery past and present, such as the increasing medicalization of childbearing care, midwiferyís lack of a common identity based on education and practice standards, the mix of legal recognition, and reimbursement issues for midwifery practice. Illustrations and historical photos depict the many facets of midwifery, and engaging stories provide cultural and spiritual content. This is a ìmust-haveî for all midwives, historians, professional and educational institutions, and all those who share a passion for the history of midwifery and women. Key Features: Encompasses the most authoritative and comprehensive information available about the history of midwifery in the United States Considers the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities for midwifery Illustrated with historical photos and drawings Includes engaging stories filled with cultural and spiritual content, introductory quotes to each chapter, and plentiful chapter notes Written by two preeminent leaders in the field of midwifery