title: Central concepts in the midwife-woman relationship.
abstract: The relationship between the midwife and the woman is essential for a positive experience for woman during childbearing period, i.e. pregnancy, childbirth and the first postpartum phase. Thereby, the aim of this study was to delineate central concepts in the midwife-woman relationship, in normal as well as high-risk situations. A secondary analysis was performed on original texts from eight Swedish qualitative studies, all with a phenomenological or phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. Six pairs of concepts were elucidated; each one describing one aspect from the woman's perspective and one responsive aspect from the midwife. The pairs of concepts are: surrender-availability, trust-mediation of trust, participation-mutuality, loneliness-confirmation, differenceness-support uniqueness and creation of meaning-support meaningfulness. Disciplinary concepts about the midwife-woman relationship have evolved that are essential for care in both normal and high-risk contexts, and we suggest that they should be implemented as a guide for midwifery care.
authors.affiliation: School of Health Sciences, Borås University College, Borås, Sweden. ingela.lundgren@hb.se
authors.forename: Ingela
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lundgren
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Berg
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009721:Nurse Midwives; D036801:Parturition; D011247:Pregnancy; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D035502:Trust; D014930:Women