The doula-midwife partnership : friend or foe - how to work collaboratively

This chapter explores the unique role a doula and a midwife play within a woman’s childbearing journey and how the doula and midwife are educated to meet the needs of women, and the potential impact this can have on decision-making while providing safe and quality care. It highlights the similarities, differences, strengths and limitations between the two roles and how, at times, this leads to tension. Midwife-led continuity of care is embedded in all Australian undergraduate midwifery students who experience woman-centred care as part of continuity of care with their accredited programs. A tension for midwives is their inability to work within such a partnership ethos when a large proportion of care offered to women occurs in a medicalised fragmented model. The midwife wants to fulfil the ethos of midwifery and be ‘with woman’, yet is compelled to meet the demands of organisational policies and procedures to ensure safe care for such categorised woman.