The hospitalization of childbirth and maternal care in Sweden is from an international perspective quite unique. It was implemented already in the beginning of the 20th century and fully mainstreamed by the 1960’s. This essay examines the professional discussions of midwives and doctors as depicted in their union’s membership papers, during the hospitalization period. The hospitalization of childbirths presented a shift in responsibility and power from the midwives to the doctors, which has lead previous research to analyse this development as a clear conflict of professional interest. I will argue however that the professional frictions came later, as the midwife profession grew stronger as a collective, and were not so much present in the actual making. This essay investigates why, and touches upon class and gender divergences as explanatory factors. My findings are in part that the overtaking was more elaborate from the doctor’s point of view than the midwives. Through undermining the midwives professional competence, denying them necessary resources and advocating their superiority in the midwives internal debates, the doctor’s managed to steer the development of hospitalization and establish the hierarchy that followed. Today’s lively and sometimes infectious debate on the organization of childbirth and maternal care highlights the necessity for a deeper historical understanding and background to the indeed different positions midwives and doctors take in this regard.

Abstract Background: Aphasia is a commonly treated language disorder; however there is discrepancy among professionals regarding classification and assessment practices (Code & Petheram, 2011; McNeil & Pratt, 2001). Current research focuses heavily on acute treatment; chronic aphasia is severely under-represented. A review of the literature revealed a wide array of standardized and non-standardized tests used to evaluate both acute and chronic aphasia cases. Overall, there appears to be variance in evaluation practices, especially among SLPs (Bland et al., 2013). Aims: The present study aims to quantify two variables that may account for this inconsistency in evaluation procedures: 1) years of clinical experience and 2) professional interest. Methods: SLPs with membership to either ASHA Special Interest Group 2 or the ABAI Speech-Pathology Interest Group were contacted to participate in a survey. They were presented with a demographic questionnaire and hypothetical vignettes detailing chronic aphasia cases. The data was collected through SurveyMonkey and exported to R for statistical analysis. Months of clinical experience were subsequently correlated to specific survey responses measuring the following variables: decision to reassess, decision of what clinical constructs to address, selection of assessments, and opinion regarding generalization of naming to functional requesting behavior. Results: Due to lack of participation, the professional interest variable was eliminated. A Spearman Rho test revealed statistical significance for 5 variables. The majority of participants supported reassessment, inclusion of functional assessments, and use of confrontational naming to target requesting. Further research is warranted on the subject, including possible development of a valid functional language assessment for chronic aphasia patients. Keywords: chronic aphasia, assessment, experience, professional interest, survey, functional behaviors