title: Women, birth practitioners, and models of pregnancy and birth-does consensus exist?
abstract: Women have differing beliefs about pregnancy and birth, and will be more suited to one type of practitioner versus another, depending on whether they believe that birth is a natural or a medical event. I hypothesize that if women and their practitioners have similar explanatory models, then the women may experience a better relationship with their practitioners, resulting in greater understanding of birth expectations, leading to improvements in experience and outcomes. In this article I explore how differing beliefs constitute identifiable models that can be distinguished as aligning with the midwifery model versus the medical model of birth.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Anthropology , University of South Carolina , Columbia , South Carolina , USA.
authors.forename: Erica
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gibson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D032921:Consensus; D003469:Culture; D036861:Delivery, Obstetric / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D005431:Florida; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008875:Middle Aged; D008880:Midwifery; D016294:Models, Nursing; D036801:Parturition; D049590:Postpartum Period; D011247:Pregnancy; D011256:Pregnancy Outcome / Q000523:psychology; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult