Women-Centered Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth

Abstract

A woman-centered approach to pregnancy must be flexible enough to address the variety of women's experiences around the world, encompassing medical conditions, cultures and family structures. It must also include women who choose not to carry a pregnancy or experience a miscarriage. This unique woman-centered text explores all these issues and more, providing a vital resource for primary care maternity clinicians and trainees including family physicians, nurse practitioners, women's health clinicians, midwives, obstetrical nurses and obstetricians. It applies the powerful, proven model of patient-centered care to pregnancy and birth - an expansion beyond previous applications to various chronic illnesses. Woman-Centered Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth incorporates dozens of vignettes describing clinicians' approaches to woman-centered maternity care with women and families from a variety of social, cultural, and economic situations facing common or problematic challenges over the course of prenatal care, birth and the postpartum period.