WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

Within the context of time, Irene’s coordinator experiences accumulate. This makes her
increasingly knowledgeable and able to stand up for what she believes in. She reveals her
techne and her phronesis in her midwifery actions and decision making in the powerful
stories she shares:
A woman in labour with her third baby was transferred to delivery suite from a
planned home birth situation because the midwife had difficulty determining the
cervical dilatation. The midwife asked for registrar review. People in delivery
suite were making negative comments about home births and without any
communication with the homebirth midwife or her client, the registrar asked a
DHB midwife to take the ultrasound machine into the room to check the position
of the baby. There had been no question about the position of the baby, so I went
up to the registrar and said to her “do you mind me pointing out that it might not
be the most sensible action to push a scanner in to the room before you have
even talked to the woman?”.
The registrar came out of the room and remarked to us that the woman wasn’t
“that unpleasant”. I responded that I had never intimated the woman was
unpleasant. All I had requested was consideration by the registrar that she would
try to understand the woman’s perspective so she could get her cooperation.
It is so easy for doctors and midwives in the tertiary setting to become reliant on
technology rather than using it appropriately to complement a midwifery or obstetric
examination. In the knowledge this woman planned for a home birth, Irene recognizes the
importance of first encounters between hospital staff, the woman and her LMC. Downe
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