Yeah the whole nurse/midwife thing intrigues me.....are they saying that all staff working in l&d wards are nurses with the standard nursing training or is it a name thing where they call the staff a nurse but their training is in line with what we call a midwife. Or are there nurses and midwives on the wards and the article only talking about the nurse component of the staff? If it literally nurses with standard nursing training and obs, that does seem to present a huge gap in the knowledge and skills in the delivery room?

But I can understand the gist of the article, if you want something to happen you need to furnish yourself with knowledge, strategies and support, but you also need a healthy dose of good luck in positioning, cord, placenta and cervix condition, etc etc.

Is it kind of a symptom of the quick fix culture we have, you know we want to loose weight without the effort and time and patience, we want to pay some one to fix our problems instead of learning how to do it ourselves.......does that equate to we want a natural birth and we are going to rock up on the day, lay on our backs, not take the many coping strategies available out there into consideration or take them seriously? I guess I don't know if that is how it happens in American hospitals on the whole, what I've seen on OBEM US version could be described as that.........