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Maintaining the links: A history of the formation of the NZCOM

Abstract:

Midwives in New Zealand have come to acknowledge the pivotal role the consumer plays in the protection of their profession. In the following discussion, I hope to outline for you how New Zealand midwives have come to this realisation and how women as consumers of the service have made it possible. Medical domination over maternity health services has been part of New Zealand's history. As in other western societies, hospitalisation, sedation and infection redefined birth outcomes and shaped today's "management" of the pregnant woman. This lead to maternity services, provided "clinical material", and kept medical monopoly on childbirth. The move from small cottage hospitals into large city hospitals was therefore a response to the health professional's needs - not to women's needs. Women became segregated into antenatal, intranatal and postnatal components; therefore reducing the midwives ability to provide total continuity of care.

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consumer involvement, founding of the College, medicalisation of birth