This document discusses women-centered care in midwifery. It defines women-centered care as focusing on a woman's unique needs, expectations, and aspirations, as well as her right to make choices about her care. The document outlines the Batho-Pele principles of putting people first in service delivery through consultation, access, courtesy, information, transparency, and addressing complaints. It describes current approaches to women-centered care such as understanding each woman's context, providing information and support for decision making, and involving family. Ensuring continuity of care, consistency of care, education, and a woman's choice are identified as ways to practice women-centered midwifery.

1. CURRENT CONCEPT OF
MIDWIFERY PRACTICE: WOMEN-
CENTERED CARE
NAME: GROUP ONE
INDEX NUMBER: 0323120522
STUDY CENTRE: TAKORADI

2. WHAT IS WOMEN – CENTERED CARE?
Women centred care focuses on the women’s unique needs,
expectations and aspirations. It recognizes her right to self-
determination in terms of choice, control and continuity of care
and addresses her social, emotional, physical, psychological,
spiritual and cultural needs and expectations. HMBA 2006
Women centred care is a module that was developed to assist
midwives in the facilitation of mutual participation during
childbirth and through enhancing the implementation of the
Batho-Pele principles.

3. Midwifery is a woman-centred, political, primary health care discipline
founded on the relationships between women and their midwives. Woman
centred care:
▶ focuses on a woman’s health needs, her expectations and aspirations;
▶ encompasses the needs of the woman’s baby, and includes the woman’s
family, her other important relationships and community, as identified
and negotiated by the woman
▶ herself;
▶ is holistic in its approach and recognizes each woman’s social, emotional,
physical, spiritual and cultural needs, expectations and context (as defined
by the woman herself);
▶ recognises every woman’s right to self-determination in attaining choice,
control and continuity of care from one or more
▶ known caregivers;

4. ▶ recognises every woman’s responsibility to make informed decisions for
herself, her baby and her family with assistance, when requested, from
health professionals;
▶ is informed by scientific evidence, by collective and individual
experience and by intuition;
▶ aims to follow each woman across the interface between institutions
and the community, through pregnancy, labour and birth and the
postnatal period so all women remain
▶ connected to their social support systems; the focus is on the woman,
not on the institutions or the professionals involved;
▶ includes collaboration and consultation between health professionals.

5. WHAT IS BATHO - PELE?
The term Batho-Pele means “people first”.
Batho-Pele therefore is putting other people first before
considering your own needs. By identifying important things
that can improve the quality of service provided to customers.
AIMS OF BATHO-PELE
To ensure efficiency and accountability in service delivery

6. THE BATHO-PELE PRINCIPLES
1. Consultation
2. Service standards
3. Access
4. Courtesy
5. Information
6. Openness and transparency
7. Redress

7. CONSULTATION
This deals with enquiring from the patient on what they
want from the care providers. This can be done by
talking to the client , surveys, questionnaires, etc. Ask
questions about clients needs.It’s important to consult
as many of our clients so that we can use the
information we receive to help improve our service to
them. It’s important to report back to customers so they
know what to expect, and to our staff so they know
what is expected from us.

8. SERVICE STANDARDS
Patient should be told what level and quality of
services they would receive so they can be aware of
what to expect. Example client should be aware if
specialized services are available and the quality of
care given.

9. ACCESS
Make it easy for clients to benefit from the service provided. Example
by providing wheelchair ramps, disable parking bay and taking our
services to the communities eg. Health screenings .Good staff
attitudes and addressing client in their own language makes access
easier.

10. COURTESY
All patient should be treated with dignity ,respect and consideration.
Example midwives must be polite and friendly when handling
clients.We should write down a code of conduct and we should train
and assess our staff in providing client centered care.

11. INFORMATION
Patient should be given full and accurate informtion
about the service they are entitled to receive at the
hospital. This can be done by the use of the hospital’s
website, social media, radio, tv and
newspapers.customers have different needs and they
do not all speak the same language. We should
disseminate a Service Commitment Charter to inform
clients about the services we offer.

12. OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY
Hospital should be open about their day-to-day
activities . Information on how much they receive
and how much they spent should be available to the
public. Client should be made aware of where to
lodge complaints and how to do it. If we do not meet
our standards, we should list the reasons and find
ways to improve our service.

13. REDRESS
Make it easy for patient to express their satisfaction and
dissatisfaction aboutthe services provided. This complain must
be asserted in a sympathetic and positive way and expectation
or apologies should be provided accordingly.
We should train staff to deal with complaints in a friendly
,
helpful manner. We should tell Customers how and where to
complain and we should keep a record of all complaints and
how we dealt with them. We should understand that
complaints can help us to improve our service as they tell us
what our clients want.

14. VALUE FOR MONEY
Make good use of available resources. Avoid wastage
of time, money and other resources. Eliminate fraud
and corruption. Ensure that patients are given the
best quality care to match their expenses
needs.Innovation can be new ways of providing
better service, cutting costs, improving
conditions,and generally making changes

15. CURRENT APPROACHES TO WOMEN –
CENTRED CARE
In providing women-centred care, the midwife and other health professionals must;
1. Understand the women’s context. An individualized (social and emotional
situations) approach to care should be offered at all times rather than routine
practice. Care provision shouldbe flexible, friendly and not-threatening making it
accessible to all women.
Cultural safety in antenatal care. This is based on basic human rights of respect,
dignity, empowerment, safety and autonomy. This approach considers the dynamic
nature of culture and diversity within groups, avoid stereotyping and identify the
needs of individuals receiving care.
Providing information and support so that women can make decisions. Women
should be provided with evidence –based information and encourage to participate
in decision about care. They should be guided to determine what treatments she
accepts or chooses not to accept.
Documentingdiscussions and decisions. Documentation and discussion inn clear
and consistent records in directing that the messages have been understood.
Informed consent, responsibilities and accountability for decisions must be kept in
records and ensure that all members of the collaboration aware of essential
information throughout maternity care.
2.
3.
4.

16. 5. Involving the women’s family. Women and their
families should be assisted to prepare for
pregnancy, birth and parenthood. Fathers have
needs of their own as individuals not simply as
companions. Women centred care encompasses
the needs of the baby
, the woman’s family
,
significant others and community as identified
and negotiated by the woman herself

17. The process of providing women-centred care takes place in3
phases:
1. The dependence phase: this involves limited mutual
participation between the mother and the midwife.
2. The Interdependence phase: this includes strategies to
facilitate mutual participation and comprising procedures
and dynamics.
3. The independence phase: focuses on outcome of care.

18. WAYS TO ENSURE THE PRACTICE OF
WOMEN – CENTRED CARE
1. Continuity of care
2. Midwife lead modules of care eg. Continue hands on care
during pregnancy, labour and delivery and post-partum
3. Consistency of care
4. Education of women
5. Common approaches to care across professions
6. Women’s choice

19. Benefits of women centered-
care
1.It focuses on the woman's individual needs,
aspirations and expectations than the needs of
the professional or the institution
2.It gives the power to women to be able to
make choices, control and continue care from a
known caregiver/s.
3.It also encourages the woman to make
decisions regarding her social, emotional,
physical, psychological, spiritual n cultural
needs
4.It also allows the woman to consider the
needs of the baby, the family and people that

21. NAME INDEX NUMBER
FLORA ADJEI 0323100222
AMPADU JOYCE KISSIWAA 0323112022
READIC DADZI 0323117522
APPIAH TAWIAH GEORGINA 0323116022
AGNES ANTWI 0323112722
AGNES OFORI 0323079322
ALICE OBENEWAA ODURO 0323117722
PRISCILLA NANA YEBOAH 0323109822
ELORM FLORENCE AGBOSU 0323077222
ANNIE ATOBRAH AFFUL 0323120522
KATE ANKAMAH 0323115422
FANNY BEATRICE OKYERE 0323120422
EDNA OKRAH 0323093622
ELLEN AMANKWAAH APPIAH 0323092522
JULIANA ABBAM ARTHUR 0323097922
CYNTHIA ANDOH 0323102522
VIVIAN OFORI 0323119822