Part 1. Integrating into teams: The midwife's experience

The proposed changes recommended by the report Changing Childbirth (Department of Health, 1993) heralded a new era for midwifery as it moved towards using midwifery skills in a more holistic and less fragmented way in order to promote continuity of care. Seven years on from the report, midwives are unhappy. The proposed changes have seen midwives overworked, overstressed, undermined, and devalued. In the main, women are still cared for at the birth by an unknown midwife and care continues to be fragmented. This paper is drawn from a qualitative study which involved interviewing a group of midwives, in a small district general hospital in the north east of England, who had experienced major changes in the way care was organized in their maternity unit. A modified grounded theory approach was used to analyse the data incorporating feminist principles of reflection, collaboration, and women's ways of knowing to guide and interpret meaning.