Capturing the complexity of practice an insider: in-labour ethnography

New Thinking on Improving Maternity Care is the result of years of comparative international research, with the goal of finding and generating the best possible evidence across a range of childbirth practices, contexts, and issues in Europe. There is a general shift towards a more risk-averse approach to childbirth globally, but this is occurring at different rates in population attitudes and in use of childbirth technologies, in different countries. The drivers to such changes can also vary from country to country, but the clinical, social and economic consequences are similar.

This book offers a new set of theories to help explain the nature of maternity care provision across Europe and beyond, including complexity theory, salutogenesis, and new concepts of organisational culture. The aim of the book is to examine the nature of these theories, and to apply them to a range of practical situations in a number of different countries. A fascinating book, that will become required reading for European maternity professionals.