The practising midwife
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Northampton Homebirth Team commenced in April 2010, with a group of midwives dedicated to supporting women choosing to birth at home. Twenty seven months since the team commenced, the home birth rate has continued to rise at a steady sustainable rate, at the time of writing this feature reaching a monthly all time high of 9.6 per cent. The team believe that the key to their success is promoting normality, management support, maternity incident review forums and a multi professional team approach for women choosing to birth at home against medical advice. Whilst the number of women cared for is somewhat smaller that the recent Birthplace study, our statistics continually support the theory that a dedicated home birth team is more likely to limit adverse outcomes in relation to planned home births.
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The aim of this bi-monthly column is to highlight Cochrane Systematic Reviews of relevance to pregnancy and childbirth and to stimulate discussion on the relevance and implications of the review for practice. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international organisation that prepares and maintains high quality systematic reviews to help people make well informed decisions about health care and health policy. ⋯ The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) is published monthly online. Residents in countries with a national license to The Cochrane Library, including the UK and Ireland, can access the Cochrane Library online free through www.thecochranelibrary.com.
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The Rotunda Hospital (Dublin) obstetric emergency training programme (RHOET) was designed, in 2008, to meet the ongoing education and training needs of the local multidisciplinary team. Prior to its implementation, senior midwives attended the advanced life support in obstetrics (ALSO) course, and many of the obstetricians attended the Management of obstetric emergencies and trauma (MOET) and/or ALSO courses. Attendance at these off site courses meant that the only opportunity for team training was the informal and ad hoc 'drills and skills' that took place in the birthing suite. This paper documents our journey since RHOET was implemented.