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The Delivery Of Maternity Care

Decent Essays

There is ample evidence that the delivery of maternity care, particularly in rural and remote areas of Canada is in crisis, largely as a result of the rapid decline and overall supply of professionals to provide this care (Druss et al., 2003; British Columbia Women’s Hospital and Health Centre Maternity Care Enhancement Project, 2004; Fauveau, 2008; Smith, Brown, Stewart, Trim, Freeman, Beckhoff, and Kasperski, 2009; Martin and Kasperski, 2010; Graves, 2012; McIntyre, Francis, Chapman, 2012; Meffe, Moravac, Espin, 2012; Miller, Couchie, Ehman, Graves, Grzybowski & Medves, 2012; Morgan et al., 2014). The continuing decline in the number of Canadian family physicians that provide maternity care, particularly with intra-partum care, has been highlighted in a number of articles (Price et al., 2005; Tucker et al., 2005; Peterson et al., 2007; Morgan et al., 2014). These continuing trends, in combination with the decreasing number of obstetricians being trained in intrapartum care, and number of students opting out of obstetrics to focus on gynaecology, have contributed to a general crisis in maternity care over the last decade (Price et al., 2005; Stempniak, 2016). This has given rise to possibilities of new ways of providing care to the maternal and newborn population, and inventive means for utilizing health human resources in the most productive and efficient ways (Stempniak, 2016). Collaborative practice, interprofessional education and post-licensure interprofessional

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