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Attempting to involve consumers in midwifery policy development: A paper presented at the National Midwifery Conference, Auckland, August 1988

Abstract:

This paper is aimed at describing an exercise that the NZ Nurses'Association Ad Hoc Committee on Maternal and Infant Policy went through to try and collect consumer views about midwives and the services provided by them. Those views were expected to help shape the resulting policy document. As a starting point, I want to reflect for a moment on the term 'consumer'. To me, the word presupposes a passivity, an object to which something is done: the end result of the process of production. It fits easily into the capitalist model of production and reproduction, and in so doing accounts for the commodification of those people who use the health services during the process of childbirth i.e. those who pay for a service. At this point it is not necessary or useful to develop that model to illustrate how the commodification of birth is designed to increase the profits of the health care providers (i.e. obstetricians). Others have done that. What is relevant is the consideration of their term consumer and its development, paradoxically, into 'health activism'.

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consumer involvement, midwifery policy