Evidence Based Midwifery
Applications in Context
Chapter One
The Nature and Use of
Evidence in Midwifery Care
Jane Munro and Helen Spiby
Introduction
At the beginning of the evidence based practice movement, much of the midwifery
profession responded enthusiastically to the potential for change. Critical to this
was the publication of resources of a quality not previously available to midwives,
particularly Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth (Enkin et al. 1989). Evidence
based practice was seen to be offering a powerful tool to question and examine
obstetric-led models of care that had dominated the previous decades (Page 1996;
Renfrew 1997; Wickham 2000; Munro and Spiby 2001; Brucker and Schwarz 2002;
Bogdan-Lovis and Sousa 2006). The results of such examination could have meant
'starting stopping' the unhelpful interventions that had embedded themselves in
common practice (Muir Gray 1997). Page (1996, p. 192) even suggested that it
offered to 'take us out of the dark ages and into the age of enlightenment' by
demanding tha ... read full excerpt from Evidence Based Midwifery: Applications in Context ebook
