Problem Within maternity care policies and practice, pregnant migrant women are regarded as a vulnerable population. Background Women’s experiential knowledge is a key element of woman-centred care but is insufficiently addressed in midwifery practice and research that involves migrant women. Aim To …

Background: In 2009, the Steering Committee for Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Netherlands recommended the implementation of continuous care during labor in order to improve perinatal outcomes. However, in current care, routine maternity caregivers are unable to provide this type of care, resulting …

Background: The maternity care system in the Netherlands is well known for its support of community-based midwifery. However, regular midwifery practices typically do not offer caseload midwifery care – one-to-one continuity of care throughout pregnancy and birth. Because we know very little about the …

Background The number of interventions is lower, and the level of satisfaction is higher among women who receive midwife-led primary care from one or two midwives, compared to more midwives. This suggests that midwives in small-sized practices practice more women centred. This has yet to be explored. Objective To …

Introduction: Shared decision-making is considered to be a key aspect of woman-centered care and a strategy to improve communication, respect, and satisfaction. This scoping review identified studies that used a shared decision-making support strategy as the primary intervention in the context of perinatal …

Background Psychological aspects of labor and birth have received little attention within maternity care service planning or clinical practice. The aim of this paper is to propose a model demonstrating how neurohormonal processes, in particular oxytocinergic mechanisms, not only control the physiological …

A growing number of women have paid jobs before and during pregnancy. Thus, increasingly more women are potentially exposed to occupational hazards by working with organic solvents, pollutants, toxins, or contaminated water. Working in these areas can lead to adverse effects on the health of young women …

Background: Research in maternity care is often conducted in mixed low and high-risk or solely high-risk populations. This limits generalizability to the low-risk population of pregnant women receiving care from Dutch midwives. To address this limitation, 24 midwifery practices in the Netherlands bring …

This study addresses the ethnic identity of transculturally placed adolescent foster youth with ethnic minority backgrounds in The Netherlands. We conducted qualitative interviews to provide insight into the lifeworlds of twenty foster youth. We found that constructing an ethnic identity was complex …

Background: Despite evidence supporting the safety of vaginal birth after caesarean section (VBAC), rates are low in many countries. Methods: OptiBIRTH investigated the effects of a woman-centred intervention designed to increase VBAC rates through an unblinded cluster randomised trial in 15 maternity …