The purpose of the study was to describe the knowledge, attitudes and practices of nurse-midwives related to obstetric care at Thaba-Tseka, Lesotho. A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional research design was used. Data were collected using structured questionnaire from 45 nurse-midwives. The findings revealed that nurse-midwives had mean knowledge score of 10.5(80.7%) out of a possible 13(Standard Deviation (SD) 1.31) on obstetric care issues. However, the majority of nurse-midwives (n=28, 62.2%) did not have knowledge on the steps of the active management of third stage of labour according to the WHO. The mean scores on practice were 34.5(86.2%) against a possible 40(SD 5.43) for antenatal care, 39.2(89%) against a possible of 44(SD 4.66) and 22.4(93.3%) against a possible of 24(SD 2.18) for postnatal care. The study revealed that nurse-midwives had positive attitudes towards obstetric care practices with mean score for attitudes was 23.4(86.7%) against a possible score of 27(SD 3.02) / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

M.Cur. / Statistics prove that the monster called HIV/AIDS invades our country. More women are said to be HIV positive in comparison to men. The midwives are the frontline health workers who have to care for these pregnant HIV positive women and therefore are at occupational risk of HIV infection because of their caring role. The experience of midwives regarding the delivery of the babies of HIV positive women was not well addressed before as limited studies have been undertaken about the experiences of midwives, therefore inspiring the researcher to undertake this study. The purpose of this study was to: • Explore and describe how midwives experienced the delivery of the babies of HIV positive women. • Describe the guidelines for health professionals to support midwives in order for them to render good midwifery care. The paradigmatic perspective of this study was guided by the Theory for Health Promotion in Nursing (Rand Afrikaans University, Department of Nursing Science, 1992:2-15), which reflects the focus on the whole person.

Au Mexique et plus spécifiquement dans l’Etat du Morelos, les sages-femmes traditionnelles constituent un groupe hétérogène quant à l’origine culturelle et ethnique, aux pratiques thérapeutiques, à la personnalité, à la formation reçue, aux honoraires perçus…. Personnages à la croisée des savoirs, les sages-femmes puisent leurs connaissances dans les traditions médicales náhuatl ; elles ont également reçu une formation académique de la part de la médecine occidentale.Elles pratiquent un panachage de techniques appartenant à des traditions médicales savantes ou populaires aux systèmes de référence a priori opposés. Elles démontrent des capacités d’intégration de connaissances issues de ces différentes traditions. Leur intérêt pour les thérapies dans la mouvance actuelle des médecines dites alternatives dénote aussi leur curiosité d’esprit et la souplesse de leurs pratiques. Au plan thérapeutique, les sages-femmes occupent un espace bien spécifique avec ses caractéristiques propres dans l’accompagnement de la femme au cours du processus de la maternité,de la conception à la période puerpérale. Les bains, les massages, l’alimentation et le remède végétal constituent une de leurs principales ressources thérapeutiques; l’importance de leur pharmacopée varie d’une dizaine à une centaine de plantes. Le système thérapeutique des sages-femmes est fondé sur un invariant : le concept du chaud et du froid. / In Mexico, more specifically in the state of Morelos, traditional midwives compose a heterogeneous group with regards to their cultural and ethnic origins, their therapeutic praxis, their individual personalities, their training, their fees, etc. At crossroads of knowledge sources, midwives draw their competence from Náhuatl medical traditions and benefited from an academic training from occidental medicine as well. They resort to a number of diverse techniques belonging to wise and popular medical traditions which often refer to a priori conflicting systems. Midwives from Morelos demonstrate their capacity to integrate the lore from those different traditions. Their interest towards the therapies relating to the sphere of the present so-called alternative medicines also indicates their openness and the flexibility of their praxis. From a therapeutic point of view, the midwives assume aspecific role with clear characteristics in accompanying women all along the maternity process, from conception to puerperal period. Baths, massage, nutrition and herbal remedies constitute their main therapeutical resources; the range of their pharmacopoeia varies from a dozen to about a hundredplants. The therapeutic system of the midwives is based on the invariant dichotomy of hot and cold.

M.Cur. (Maternal and Child Nursing Science) / The implementation of the PMTCT programme was conceptualised in 2000. The aim of this study was to determine the views of midwives regarding the implementation of the PMTCT programmes in the public health centres in Soweto. Data was collected from midwives involved in the implementation of PMTCT in antenatal clinics by means of semi-structural interviews. Of the 20 midwives (N=20) interviewed, only five (5) midwives attended formal training. The discussion of the views of midwives regarding the implementation of PMTCT centered around the lack of formal training, lack of resources, lack of infrastructure, negative attitude of the community, lack of budgeting, lack of support by colleagues and poor management support, language barriers in communication and religious beliefs. This study found that midwives need to go for formal training on PMTCT programmes and that more research need to be done in this field. Moreover, the findings from this study have implications for clinical practice. In addition, guidelines were formulated to help midwives and other health care practitioners to implement the PMTCT programmes in antenatal care.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether patients were satisfied with midwifery services rendered at the two Community Health Centres in the Eastern Cape Province.The study sites were Empilweni Gompo and Nontyatyambo Community Health Centres. Descriptive quantitative study design was employed, using a questionnaire with closed and open ended questions as the data collecting tool. Likert Scale was used to measure the following variables: quality care variables to measure level of satisfaction with midwifery services rendered and to determine positive and negative perceptions regarding quality of care received during antenatal, labour and postnatal period. Non-random convenience sampling of sixty pregnant women, thirty from each Community Health Centre, with two or more antenatal subsequent visits and forty postpartum women, twenty from each health facility, six hours after delivery if there were no complications. Out of 60 participants interviewed n=60 (100 percent) agreed that individual counseling and importance of HIV testing was explained.The majority of participants n=53(88 percent) disagreed that they were educated about focused antenatal visits. Out of 60 participants interviewed n=41(68 percent) agreed that delivery plan formed part of their ANC visits and n=18 (30 percent) disagreed. Of the 60 participants interviewed n=11(18 percent) agreed that they were told that they had the right to choose labour companions and n=48 (80 percent) disagreed.Out of 60 participants interviewed n=23 (38 percent) stated that they waited a long period of time without being attended to by midwives. In general, the study revealed high satisfaction level with intrapartum and postnatal care due to functional accessibility of both Community Health Centres. Both health centres delivered normal healthy babies and mothers. However, the participants were dissatisfied with antenatal care rendered at the two facilities. The researcher’s recommendations were based on the closing of gaps that were identified with regard to the implementation of Basic Antenatal Care; birth companions: health education deficiency; community involvement and participation.

Department of Advanced Nursing Science / MCur

No description available.

Abstrakt  Bakgrund: Sexuell ohälsa och våldsutsatthet är vanligt bland ungdomar och kan få allvarliga hälso-och beteendemässiga konsekvenser för unga kvinnor och män. Ungdomsmottagningarnas centrala mål är att främja sexuell och reproduktiv hälsa. Barnmorskors roll innebär bland annat att upptäcka ungdomar med sexuellt riskbeteende och våldsutsatthet. Motiv: Utmaningen i barnmorskors dialog med ungdomar är att få dem att dela med sig av negativa erfarenheter vilket sällan sker spontant. Därav utvecklades bedömningsverktyget SEXIT för att underlätta kommunikationen mellan barnmorskor och ungdomar. Studier i norra Sverige saknas angående barnmorskors upplevelse av bedömningsverktyget SEXIT. Syfte: Syftet med studien var att narrativt undersöka hur barnmorskor på ungdomsmottagning upptäcker och bemöter risk- eller våldsutsatta ungdomar innan, under och efter implementering av bedömningsverktyget SEXIT. Metod: En kvalitativ intervjustudie genomfördes med sex barnmorskor. Intervjuerna analyserades enligt Riessman’s sätt att bilda en narrativ metaberättelse där intervjuerna kodades och tematiserades. Genusperspektiv användes som inspiration.  Resultat: Analysprocessen resulterade i fem narrativa teman som presenterades i en bestämd tidsordning. Första temat, Förtroendeingivande barnmorskor med ambition att fånga upp våldsutsatthet där frågor om våld tappas bort, handlade om hur de fångade upp våld och risktagande innan SEXIT. Tema två, SEXIT en ögonöppnare i teorin men svårare att implementera i praktiken, avser hur barnmorskorna upplevde kursen, resterande tre teman, SEXIT - innebär både motstånd och möjligheter, Tiden - en grundläggande förutsättning för att upptäcka våldsutsatthet och risktagande bland ungdomar, att rutinmässigt utfråga unga kan avslöja sexuell ohälsa, innehöll narrativ som handlade om motstånd, möjligheter, utmaningar som kunde bidra till att upptäcka ungdomar med sexuell ohälsa. Konklusion: Innan SEXIT intog barnmorskorna delvis en undvikande roll gällande riskbeteenden och erfarenhet av våld. Efter SEXIT intog barnmorskorna en mer aktiv roll med direkta frågor baserat på det ifyllda SEXIT-underlaget. SEXIT kan vara ett användbart verktyg, men narrativen tyder på ett visst motstånd mot användning vid dropp-in. / Abstract  Background: Sexual risk taking and violence are common among adolescents and can have serious health and behavioral consequences for them. The youth clinics' central goal is to promote sexual and reproductive health. The role of midwives includes, among other things, detecting adolescence with sexual risk behavior and exposure to violence. Motive: The challenge in midwives' dialogue with adolescence to make them share negative experiences, which rarely happens spontaneously. From this, the SEXIT assessment tool was developed to facilitate communication between midwives and adolescents. Studies in northern Sweden are lacking regarding experience of the assessment tool SEXIT. Aim: The aim was to narratively investigate how midwives at youth clinics discover and meet with at-risk or violent adolescence before, during and after implementation of the SEXIT assessment tool.   Methods: A qualitative interview study was conducted with six midwives. The interviews were analysed according to Riessman's method of forming a narrative meta-narrative where the interviews were coded and thematized. Gender perspective was used as inspiration. Result: The analysis identified five narrative themes presented chronologically. The first theme, "Confidence-inspiring Midwives," focused on midwives detecting violence issues before SEXIT. Theme two, "SEXIT: Theory verses Practice," explored the challenges of implementing SEXIT in real-life situations. The remaining three themes, "SEXIT: Resisting and Embracing," "Time: Essential for Detecting Violence among Adolescence," and "Routine Questioning Reveals Sexual Health Issues in Adolescence," discussed narratives on resistance, opportunities, and challenges in uncovering sexual health concerns in adolescents. Conclusion: Before SEXIT, the midwives partly assumed an avoidant role regarding risk behaviours and experience of violence. After SEXIT, the midwives took a more active role with direct questions based on the SEXIT assessment tool. It can be a useful tool, but the narrative signifies resistance to use SEXIT during drop-in.

<p dir="ltr"><i>Conjure, Care, Calls, and Cauls</i> centers the histories of Black and southern conjuring midwives in life, lore, and literature. I argue that these conjuring midwives are practitioners of wholistic care who employ conjure work as a method to access wholeness. This avenue to access Black wholeness was intentionally disrupted by 20^th century physicians across the United States and the South. These physicians espoused <i>disabling racist rhetoric</i> to attack Black midwives’ bodies and beliefs as dangerous, casting them as unreliable and unsafe caregivers. Widely circulated in US medical journals, physicians articulated a national and regional “midwife problem” that led to the overwhelming removal of Black midwives from US medical care. This successful displacement of Black midwives by Western medicine and its physicians created and perpetuated what I name the <i>crazy conjure lady trope</i>, the disabling stereotype that considers the Black folk health practitioner or believer as crazy, insane, or otherwise unwell in Black women’s literature and lives. Using Black feminist literary criticism and a Black feminist disability framework, I consider Toni Cade Bambara’s <i>The Salt Eaters </i>(1981), Gloria Naylor’s <i>Mama Day </i>(1988), and Jesmyn Ward’s <i>Sing, Unburied, Sing </i>(2017) alongside Black midwives’ ethnographies and autobiographies to center and consider the Black southern conjuring midwife in Black women’s literature and US history.</p>

The South African government promulgated the Choice on Termination of pregnancy Act (CTOP Act, 92 of 1996). This was a dramatic declaration of intent unprecedented in the African continent and globally. This act changed the outlook of the practice of termination of pregnancy by ensuring that services play a critical role in the delivery of the service. This study, which is qualitative in nature, explored the experiences of Termination of Pregnancy service providers working in three designated public health institutions in the Limpopo Province. Interviews were conducted with six service providers to look at how they construct their practice of providing termination of pregnancy services. The information was analyzed and interpreted by means of a thematic analysis method. Major themes that emerged from the participants’ experiences centred on their relationship with family, colleagues, management, clients, and the community reflecting a sense of alienation and lack of adequate infrastructural support. Inadequate support has been found to greatly contribute to the loss of interest in the work around abortion. / Psychology / M. A. (Clinical Psychology)