Ray, A., (Ed.). (2021). Empowering Midwives and Obstetric Nurses

Abstract

In order to equip practitioners midwives and nurses, I find ‘Empowering Midwives and Obstetric Nurses’ a book to be treasured. This is more especially when it comes to supporting learning and preparing readers for the challenges faced in contemporary healthcare. This book with 192pages and twelve chapters is a treasure.

The first chapter, ‘Empowering Midwives and Obstetric Nurses’ has very impressive definitions.

 It contains this noteworthy quote:

“The term midwifery has been coined from two Old English words “mid “which means with and “wif” which comes from woman. Taken together the word midwife means a person who is with the woman. This person could belong to any gender provided the person is with the woman during pregnancy as well as the whole process of childbirth and thereafter: probably the most eventful and crucial part of a woman’s life (p1).”

The second chapter talks about vaginal delivery, pointing out all the indications and contraindications to vaginal delivery.

The third chapter is about preterm labour, in particular, delving in the science behind tocolysis in preterm labour (table 1) among other details of the chapter. Also, interesting in the chapter is the role of antibiotic administration in preterm labour, said to reduce the time to delivery and the incidence of chorioamnionitis in preterm premature rupture of membranes.

Chapter four is about identification and management of high risk complications during postnatal period by ground level workers. In this, High Risk mothers in the postnatal period have been defined as those mothers who are at the risk of their lives because of the complication occurring in the postnatal periods.

Chapter five, six and seven are about challenges in the delivery room, normal puerperium and principles of midwifery care during virulent