Book Review
Midwifery: Trends and Practice in Australia
Edited by Lesley Barclay and Linda Jones
ISBN: 0 443 05429 0; 1996; 443 pages; Churchill Livingstone Melbourne;
Pauline Glover
Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing, Flinders University of South Australia, SA
This new publication is a welcome addition to the literature discussing and debating midwifery practice. As the title suggests the book is an eclectic mixture ofsome of the trends and practices seen in midwifery in Australia today. It is by no means an all encompassing picture, however the midwifery experts who have contributed their expertise by way of their individual chapters have provided much insight into the politics and nature of the midwifery profession.
The chapters are all very different in the way that they are written. Some reflect personal experiences, such as the political and professional struggle of the independent midwife, the need for a new model of care for women and families experiencing the death of a baby and rethinking infection control. Post-natal care, mothers' experiences of infant feeding and a comparison of two models of midwifery care are based on research undertaken by the authors.
Each of these chapters reinforce the need for evidence-based practice and the challenge that midwives have to incorporate changes into their practice. The chapter describing contemporary legal issues in midwifery practice is a very useful one for midwives as the author uses midwifery examples to illustrate the importance of common law practice to midwifery. Childbearing and the ethics of technology is described from a feminist perspective and raises many questions that midwives need to address.
The author poses a very interesting question at the end of the chapter and asks what the outcome would be if a womanwere to claim compensation, not because electronic foetal monitoring was not used, but rather because it was used or misused and there was maternal or foetal damage. The book states at the outset that it was written to fill the gap between expensive text books and journals. I do not believe that it does fill the gap, however I believe that this book is worthy of purchase by midwives and others to have a better understanding of what the issues are for midwives in Australia today.
It is easy to read and well presented which should make it an attractive purchase for our overseas colleagues as well. The editors make a final statement in the last chapter, entitled 'Where to now', which raises many questions for discussion and consideration by the midwifery profession. If midwives are to be effective change agents (and not purely rhetoric) and provide women with true midwifery care then as Barclay and Jones quite rightly state 'the next five years will show whether we [midwives] can respond to opportunity positively'. To find out what these opportunities are you will need to read this book.
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