| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 2012: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
Fiscal Year 2011: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2010: ¥1,560,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥360,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore midwives’ skills in diagnosing pregnancy or birth problems and maternal care assessment at a maternity home in the Kanto area of Japan. We used an ethnographic approach, collecting data through fieldwork observations and semi-structured interviews with a single midwife at a maternity home; in all, we conducted 7 data collection sessions between October 29,2011, and September 29, 2012. The subject was a midwife and manager of the maternity home with over 50 years of clinical experience; she had founded the maternity home in the 1990s. Typically, she manages about 30 deliveries per year. In addition, she performs check-ups for pregnant women using ultrasounds. After the data were collected, the observational field notes and transcriptions of interviews were read and coded using thematic analysis and then empirically categorized.The main findings were as follows. First, the midwife made efforts to “assess the expected date of confinemen
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t accurately,” because midwives are unable to perform pre- and post-term deliveries at maternity homes. Second, she attempted to “minimize errors in fetal measurement during ultrasound.” Third, if assessments of the date of conception differed between that suggested by the ultrasound and by menstruationcalculations, the midwife identified the reasons for this inconsistency. Finally, she assured healthy expecting mothers that they were undergoing a normal pregnancy, byexplaining the common aspects of normal pregnancies and problems that might arise. She also explained that healthy expecting mothers would typically have a normal delivery irrespective of them being primiparas or multiparas and that the duration of labor and week of delivery in multiparas would be similar for each of their deliveries. The midwife’s abilities to diagnose and assess maternal care at the maternity home were based on the accuracy of her assessments of basic maternity information and the regularity of check-ups. Less
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