Cochrane Review: The Safety and Benefits of Midwives Overseeing Maternity Care

If you’re pregnant and living in the United State, it’s likely that an obstetrician will oversee your maternity care and childbirth. In other countries, however, midwives commonly provide care, assuming the pregnancy is low-risk. An updated Cochrane review aimed to figure out whether patient outcomes vary by who is leading the care team. Cochrane compiles findings from multiple studies into systematic reviews, considered top-notch for determining the best evidence-based care. In this instance, the authors looked at outcomes for moms and babies of what the authors refer to as “midwife-led continuity models of care” — defined as incorporating a midwifery perspective of minimizing routine intervention during birth, and midwives acting as the lead professionals in organizing and delivering care before, during and after birth. They considered 13 studies representing 6,242 women in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom that compared the effects of midwife-led continuity models of care with other models: eight studies compared it to a shared model of care (responsibility is shared between different care providers); three studies compared it to medical-led models of care (what we’re most used to in the United States); and two studies compared it to various options of standard care, including midwife-led (with varying levels of continuity), medical-led, and shared care. All of the studies looked at licensed midwives in hospi...
Source: Our Bodies Our Blog - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Tags: Pregnancy & Childbirth Research & Studies Source Type: blogs