Journal of midwifery & women's health
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J Midwifery Womens Health · Jan 2014
Outcomes of care for 16,924 planned home births in the United States: the Midwives Alliance of North America Statistics Project, 2004 to 2009.
Between 2004 and 2010, the number of home births in the United States rose by 41%, increasing the need for accurate assessment of the safety of planned home birth. This study examines outcomes of planned home births in the United States between 2004 and 2009. ⋯ For this large cohort of women who planned midwife-led home births in the United States, outcomes are congruent with the best available data from population-based, observational studies that evaluated outcomes by intended place of birth and perinatal risk factors. Low-risk women in this cohort experienced high rates of physiologic birth and low rates of intervention without an increase in adverse outcomes.
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J Midwifery Womens Health · Jan 2014
Midwifery care in rural and remote British Columbia: a retrospective cohort study of perinatal outcomes of rural parturient women with a midwife involved in their care, 2003 to 2008.
Midwifery has been regulated and publicly funded in British Columbia since 1998. Midwives are currently concentrated in urban areas; access to care is limited in rural communities. Rural midwifery practice can be challenging because of low birth numbers, solo practice, lack of on-site cesareans and specialist backup, and interprofessional tensions resulting from the integration of midwives into rural maternity care systems. Despite these barriers, rural midwives have made a substantial contribution to rural maternity care in British Columbia. The purpose of this retrospective cohort study is to examine outcomes of midwife-involved births in rural British Columbia in the postregionalization era. ⋯ Despite numerous challenges, midwives provide safe maternity care to rural parturient women and offer choice of birth place. Given the difficulty of recruiting and retaining maternity care providers to rural settings in British Columbia and across Canada, these findings open the door for a more sustained planning process involving midwives in rural communities. Reasons for the elevated perinatal mortality rate among women who live more than 2 hours away from services should be explored in more detail, perhaps via in-depth interviews with rural midwives who serve this population.