Evidence and Skills for Normal Labour and Birth: A Guide for Midwives

Using high-quality evidence from around the world, this important text draws together and critically examines what we know about intrapartum care, looking at how it can be translated into real-world midwifery practice.

Building upon the foundations developed by Denis Walsh in previous editions of the book, this rewritten and thoroughly updated third edition continues the emphasis towards translating evidence into skilful, safe, and respectful midwifery practice. It evaluates what we know about how skilful midwifery care improves maternal mortality rates and experiences for childbearing women, before discusses different models of midwifery and maternity care and their impact on the organisation of health services. It introduces concepts from implementation science and foregrounds strategies to enable the utilisation of evidence in practice. Chapters include practice and skills recommendations for readers, and look at topics such as:

- The implications of not following the evidence, including traumatic birth, vicarious trauma and women choosing to free birth

- The optimal design for birth settings to enable physiological birth

- Preparation for childbirth

- Why oxytocin matters

- The biomechanics of birth

- The provision of midwifery-led units and home birth

- Promoting optimal labour and birth in an obstetric unit, including the induction of labour

- Facilitating physiological breech birth

- Protecting the perineum.

Evidence and Skills for Physiological Labour and Birth provides an overview of the tangible differences skilled midwives can make in supporting positive biopsychosocial outcomes for women during labour and birth. It is an essential read for midwifery students throughout their qualifying programmes, practising midwives, policymakers, researchers, and those designing and administrating maternity care services.

Denis Walsh is Associate Professor in Midwifery at The University of Nottingham. He lectures on evidence and skills for normal birth internationally and is widely published on midwifery issues and normal birth.