Five questions to ask yourself when deciding about fetal monitoring in labour
The type of fetal monitoring you decide to use can potentially have a big impact on your experience of giving birth, how you give birth, and the health of your baby.
Tag Archive for ‘decision making’
Let’s just pop you on a trace. A reflection on language.
Is it OK to manipulate the information we share with birthing women about fetal monitoring so they do what we want?
Admission CTGs: Do they improve outcomes?
Today’s post summarises the evidence about the use of admission CTGs.
Reviewing the evidence for Intermittent Auscultation
I was excited to see a new paper, setting out the evidence for intermittent auscultation in labour (Anderson, et al., 2023). It was published in a journal for US based nurse-midwives, so it relates to the context of care in that country. Let’s see how they did in terms of getting the facts right. Is their evidence accurate? They wrote that: There are no trials comparing CTG use with no […]
Plans, preferences, maps: Getting the birth you want
I have a love-hate relationship with birth plans (by any name). Progressive standardisation of care means a woman entering maternity care systems risk being swept along with the current, her body being used to meet the organisation’s goals and priorities, not her own. Women who dare to hope for something different might be told they have “unrealistic expectations of the control they will have over the experience”, as the New […]
Failing at CTG interpretation
If you wouldn’t use runes to decide whether to do a cesarean section, why would you use a #CTG?
What is wrong with shared decision making?
I’m not saying the goal of shared decision making is inherently wrong – it’s simply too little and too late.
How do CTG guidelines impact doctors’ decisions?
All aspects of maternity care arise as consequences of the decisions that imperfect humans make, often structured by imperfect guidelines, derived from an imperfect or absent research base.
Who gets to decide?
Most women want to be involved in decisions about their maternity care. Do many actually get what they want?
CTG monitoring is NOT mandatory: A request to writers
This is my regular reminder that CTG monitoring is a choice. Write like you believe this is true.
