Читать книгу Better Births - Anna Brown - Страница 31

A definition of empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another (Medical Dictionary 2019). Both empathy and intuitive knowledge are integral components of what is perceived by experts as creating competence and is expressed through touch and physical closeness or emotionally through spiritual oneness ‘with woman’. Facilitative or cathartic interventions enable emotional and supportive approaches to acknowledge the woman's worth and demonstrate mutual respect. Sensitivity to women's needs is another aspect of the ‘with woman’ concept and is illustrated below. In addition, a midwife who makes an effort to be compassionate demonstrates empathy and intuition as spiritual care (Linhares 2012, Crowther and Hall 2015), as documented by Moloney and Gair (2015).

Observation that the nature of midwifery practice changes in an environment in which the midwife is engaged in being ‘with woman’ rather than doing, concurs with Brown's (2012) findings of watching and waiting and not just doing. Leap's publication in 2000 remains at the centre of this midwifery philosophy and was perceptive in suggesting that midwives give when they do less (Leap 2000). A key element of ensuring midwives and healthcare professionals are ‘with woman’ in their daily contact with childbearing women is well‐developed communication skills. In this respect, Gibbons (2010) suggests that communication goes beyond just words into the environment which is created in order to encourage comfort and privacy and promote unspoken dialogue. Positive first impressions created by midwives influence the quality of rapport and the relationship that is grown between woman and midwife (NHS England 2016). Raynor and England (2010) suggest that attitudes of acceptance and warmth, sharing a genuineness of transparent thoughts and feelings demonstrated in empathetic understanding by the midwife placing herself in the woman's position, are a humanistic approach to therapeutic verbal and non‐verbal communication.