Embodiment and the technologies of induction of labour.

Objective: To critically engage with the body project of induction of labour.

Design: A nested, qualitative study that formed part of a feasibility Random Controlled Trial investigating different methods of outpatient induction of labour. The data reported in this article were gathered via interview with women and midwives involved in the trial.

The experience of maternity care for migrant women living with female genital mutilation: A qualitative synthesis.

Background: Increasing numbers of childbearing women with a history of female genital mutilation (FGM) are accessing maternity services in high-income countries across the world. For many of these women, their first contact with the health services in their host country is when they are pregnant. While the clinical consequences of certain categories of FGM are well documented, how high-risk maternity services - designed to mitigate the obstetric consequences of FGM - impact upon women's experience of childbearing is less clear.

Ethnographic study of the use of interventions during the second stage of labor in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Background: Routine use of medical interventions during labor has been identified as a clinical area for concern, since such routinized practice is not consistent with an evidence-based approach to care and continues to increase despite efforts to encourage normal childbirth. Therefore, the aim of our study was to explore maternity health professionals' use of interventions during the second stage of labor in two hospitals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to understand what influences their decision-making and practices.

Methods: This was an exploratory study using an ethnographic approach.

Midwifery education and technology enhanced learning: Evaluating online story telling in preregistration midwifery education.

Background: A major issue regarding the implementation of blended learning for preregistration health programmes is the analysis of students' perceptions and attitudes towards their learning. It is the extent of the embedding of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) into the higher education curriculum that makes this analysis so vital.

Objectives: This paper reports on the quantitative results of a UK based study that was set up to respond to the apparent disconnect between technology enhanced education provision and reliable student evaluation of this mode of learning.

Expertise in physiological breech birth: A mixed-methods study.

Background: The safety of vaginal breech birth depends on the expertise of birth attendants, yet the meaning of "expertise" remains unclear and subjectively defined. The objective of this study was to define expertise and the roles experts may play in expanding access to this service.

Methods: We performed an integrative analysis of two strands of data concerning expertise in physiological breech birth, including the following: survey data from a Delphi study involving 26 very experienced clinicians (mean experience = 135 breech births) and 2 service user representatives, and interviews from a grounded theory study of 14 clinicians more moderately experienced with physiological methods (5-30 upright breech births).

Deliberate acquisition of competence in physiological breech birth: A grounded theory study.

Problem: Research suggests that the skill and experience of the attendant significantly affect the outcomes of vaginal breech births, yet practitioner experience levels are minimal within many contemporary maternity care systems.

Background: Due to minimal experience and cultural resistance, few practitioners offer vaginal breech birth, and many practice guidelines and training programmes recommend delivery techniques requiring supine maternal position. Fewer practitioners have skills to support physiological breech birth, involving active maternal movement and choice of birthing position, including upright postures such as kneeling, standing, squatting, or on a birth stool.

Innovation in preregistration midwifery education: Web based interactive storytelling learning.

Background: through a critical description of the implementation of a web based interactive storytelling learning activity introduced into an undergraduate, preregistration midwifery education programme, this paper will explore how low-cost, low-fidelity online storytelling, designed using Moodle, can be used to enhance students' understanding of compassion and empathy in practice.

Sample: cross sectional sample of first year undergraduate Midwifery students (n111) METHOD: drawing from both research and audit data collected in an Higher Education Institution in London England, the paper presents the case for using web based technology to create a sustainable model for midwifery education.

Findings: initial results indicate that it is both the low cost and positive student evaluations of web based interactive storytelling, which make this approach to preregistration midwifery education which suggests that this approach has significant potential for learning and teaching in midwifery education in diverse settings around the world.

Effectiveness of vaginal breech birth training strategies: An integrative review of the literature.

Background: The safety of vaginal breech birth depends on the skill of the attendant. The objective of this review was to identify, synthesize, and report the findings of evaluated breech birth training strategies.

Methods: A systematic search of the following on-line databases: Medline, CINAHL Plus, PsychINFO, EBM Reviews/Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Maternity and Infant Care, and Pubmed, using a structured search strategy.

Principles of physiological breech birth practice: A Delphi study.

Objective: to establish a multi-professional consensus on shared principles underlying the practice of physiological breech birth.

Design: three-round Delphi e-survey.

Setting: multi-national.

Sarah's birth. How the medicalisation of childbirth may be shaped in different settings: Vignette from a study of routine intervention in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Background: The expansion of the medicalisation of childbirth has been described in the literature as being a global phenomenon. The vignette described in this paper, selected from an ethnographic study of routine intervention in Saudi Arabian hospitals illustrates how the worldwide spread of the bio-medical model does not take place within a cultural vacuum.

Aim: To illuminate the ways in which the medicalisation of birth may be understood and practised in different cultural settings, through a vignette of a specific birth, drawn as a typical case from an ethnographic study that investigated clinical decision-making in the second stage of labour in Saudi Arabia.

The fear factor of risk - clinical governance and midwifery talk and practice in the UK.

Objective: Through the critical application of social theory, this paper will scrutinise how the operations of risk management help to constitute midwives׳ understandings of childbirth in a particular way.

Design And Setting: Drawing from rich ethnographic data, collected in the southeast of England, the paper presents empirical evidence to critically explore how institutional concerns around risk and risk management impact upon the way midwives can legitimately imagine and manage labour and childbirth. Observational field notes, transcribed interviews with various midwives, along with material culture in the form of documentary evidence will be used to explore the unintended consequences of clinical governance and its risk management technologies.

Standards for maternity care professionals attending planned upright breech births: A Delphi study.

Objective: to establish a consensus of opinion on standards of competence for professionals attending upright breech births.

Design: a three-round Delphi e-survey.

Setting: multinational.

'She can't come here!' Ethics and the case of birth centre admission policy in the UK.

Using ethnographic data lifted from an investigation into midwifery talk and practice in the South of England, this paper sets out to interrogate the ethics underpinning current admission policy for Free Standing (midwifery led) Birth Centres in the UK. The aim of this interrogation is to contest the grounds upon which birth centres admissions are managed, particularly the over-reliance on abstract calculations of risk--far removed from the material lived experience of the mother wishing to access these birth centre services.

The swan effect in midwifery talk and practice: a tension between normality and the language of risk.

Midwifery activity in the labour room coalesces around routine surveillance practices. When engaging in such practice, midwives have to cope with attempting to instil a sense of confidence in the mother's embodied ability to give birth to her baby spontaneously while concurrently attending to an array of risk-focused tests and measurements. Midwives are vigilant about the potential harm that may come to mother and baby while at the same time they are responsible for facilitating a normal birth.