Monday 2 January 2012

Bystanding Behaviour in Midwifery

I was alerted by a friend on facebook, to this article Bystanding Behaviour in Midwifery, about the way midwives don't stand up for women and how midwifery students are acculturated and desensitised to unkind behaviour. The article, written in 2008, is by Margaret Jowitt, who did her masters in Keele in 1998 on Mothers' Experience of Birth at Home and in Hospital. The book "Childbirth Unmasked" was written as a result of her reseach. Margaret is a lay member of the Association of Radical Midwives UK and a columnist for the Huffington Post.

Margaret wrote:
"I HAVE LONG WANTED to write an article on ‘Woman's inhumanity to woman' but have shied away until now for fear of being seen as attacking midwives and failing to acknowledge all they have achieved over the years in the care they give to women, often under very difficult and alien circumstances when they are based in hospitals".
I'm very glad she found a way to move through her fear and publish this article on Bystanding Behaviour in Midwifery and good to see it online as the issues are still alive and well today and not just in the UK.  Distressing as it is to think such articles are necessary, we need to examine and digest the ideas presented in this piece and discover what we can do to change or do better. I shared the article on facebook and twitter, thinking it would be useful for midwifery students.  However, I was prompted to put this post up to explore the ideas further following a reply 'tweet' to the article on Twitter.
I was a bystander recently and it traumatized me , worse was my colleagues saying it was normal and I was being dramatic. 
How many of us have had our feelings about and discomfort with the way women have been treated minimised or dismissed?
What happens to us when abuse is normalised?

When there is a disconnect between what we know is right and what is happening, between what is taught and what is practice, there is cognitive and emotional dissonance and a sense of not knowing what to do next...



How do you deal with that?

Is this your experience?