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A criticism of using women’s views as an assessment of the maternity services in the UK is that the views of some have been under‐represented and inappropriately researched, in particular those from minority ethnic groups. In addition, there is criticism that “what” has been assessed within the maternity services, and other health‐care arenas, has been driven by the perspective of those who provide the service rather than those who use it. The purpose here is to explore integrating Pakistani and indigenous “white” women’s views with the Donabedian‐Maxwell grid, as a means of offering a consumer‐focused template for underpinning quality assessment and quality assurance strategies for the maternity services in the UK.

This article analyses provision of health and social care for pregnant women and new families who have been unsuccessful in their asylum claims in the United Kingdom. It identifies the contribution of maternity care to child health, and examines the implications of the legislation that excludes ‘failed’ asylum seekers from free NHS secondary health care and denies them housing and financial support. Finally, the article examines the impact on pregnant women and their babies of being held in removal (detention) centers.

The paper seeks to examine how an online maternity record involving pregnant women worked as a means to create shared maternity care.

Ethnographic techniques have been used. The paper adopts a theoretical/methodological framework based on science and technology studies.

The paper shows how a version of “the responsible patient” emerges from the project which is different from the version envisioned by the project organisation. The emerging one is concerned with the boundary between primary and secondary sector care, and not with the boundary between home and clinic, which the project identifies as problematic and seeks to transgress.

The pilot project, which is used as a case, is terminated prematurely. However, this does not affect the fact that more attention should be paid to the specific redistribution of responsibilities entailed in shared care projects. Rather than seeking to connect all actors in an unbounded space, shared care might instead suggest a space for patients and professionals to experiment with new roles and responsibilities.

When designing coordination tools for health care, IT designers and project managers should attend to the specific ways in which boundaries are inevitably enacted and to the ways in which care is already shared. This will provide them with opportunities to use the potentials of new identities and concerns that emerge from changing the organisation of healthcare in relation to IT design.

The paper shows that “unshared” care does not exist; care is always shared among human and nonhuman actors. It also points to the value of studying how boundaries are enacted in projects that seek to create continuity across boundaries.

There is a general agreement that the potential of shared learning is great in terms of interprofessional working and client care. Despite the fact that interprofessional education has been a key area of professional education and practice policies for the last decade there is a dearth of evidence of its successful implementation in maternity care. Doctors and midwives are often educated in separate faculties within universities and rarely given the opportunity for shared learning activities, particularly at postgraduate level. Barriers to implementing interprofessional learning are identified within the literature and these include a difference in perception of the status each profession holds and different ways of working and learning which impedes the development of interprofessional relationships. It is argued that through interprofessional education, doctors and midwives should be enabled to develop skills of collaborative working, thus making referrals between professionals more effective. The exploration of the differences of professional cultures in a shared learning environment will enable professionals to formulate agreement on best practice in the clinical areas, based on current best evidence. Thus, interprofessional education aims to dispel the stereotypes and prejudice which often act as a barrier to effective collaborative working. The implications of interprofessional education on three main areas of practice are explored using a review of the literature: professional roles; conflict and collaboration between professions; and the sharing of knowledge and skills. Recommendations are made for the development of post‐registration shared learning that address these key areas.

In a wider debate on defining and measuring quality in health care, there is a particular need for frameworks for understanding and managing quality in specific specialties. This article addresses the definition and measurement of quality in maternity care. It develops a pro forma for monitoring and hence managing midwifery quality.

The importance of understanding consumer perceptions of services is widely acknowledged and becoming more relevant in health care, as attempts to incorporate users’ views into service development and evaluation are increasing. This study focused on women’s responses to their recent experience of maternity care, and sought to gain insight into the service features they associated with negative and positive reactions. Postal questionnaires were sent to antenatal and postnatal women. Two open questions invited women to note if any aspects of their care had particularly impressed or bothered them. There was variation in the factors identified through the different phases of the service ‐ antenatal, labour and postnatal care. However, staff attitudes were a main source of positive comments throughout the service, and lack of information and poor explanations were a consistent source of negative responses. Providing consumers with an opportunity to give feedback on their service experience should be based on issues which are relevant to them, not just on those which are measurable.

This paper sets out to explore health professionals' views and experiences regarding the work culture that exists in their hospital units, and further how patients influence these experiences.

The paper employs a qualitative approach involving individual interviews with 60 health professionals in Canada employed in what is conceptualised as “open” (emergency room and maternity care) and “closed” (intensive care, head and neck surgery) units.

The paper finds that the influence of the hospital unit outweighs the influence of professional boundaries but for some groups more than for others. Health professionals in more open units tend to be less satisfied with their work, have more difficult relations with patients, and experience tensions with co‐workers and management. Those in closed units tend to be more satisfied with their work, have relatively better relations with patients and co‐workers, and tend to have more cooperative relations with management. The different structural conditions of work in open and closed units are also clearly important.

The sample for the study was self‐selected from one hospital, which may limit the generalisability of some of the findings.

The insights garnered from the study may help professionals and managers to develop unit‐specific policies to create a more positive workplace culture.

There is a growing body of research on professional culture and oganisational culture that often does not clearly delineate how the two exist concurrently. The paper explicitly investigates this issue by examining work culture across various health professional groups and also across hospital units, and further how patients figure in these experiences.

Examines issues raised by Changing Childbirth. Summarizes an IMS/RCM report and is based on research in maternity units at different stages in the adoption of various approaches to developing continuity of care. It is concerned with the effect on midwives′ working lives and explores issues of grading, responsibility, working hours, career progression and job satisfaction.

This paper aims to describe the process to create an inventory of the facilities in Canada designated to incarcerate women and girls, health service responsibility by facility, facility proximity to hospitals with maternity services and residential programmes for mothers and children to stay together. This paper creates the inventory to support health researchers, prison rights advocates and policymakers to identify, analyse and respond to sex and gender differences in health and access to health services in prisons.

In spring 2019, this study conducted an environmental scan to create an inventory of every facility in Canada designated for the incarceration of girls and women, including remand/pretrial custody, immigration detention, youth facilities and for provincial and federal sentences.

There are 72 facilities in the inventory. In most, women are co-located with men. Responsibility for health varies by jurisdiction. Few sites have mother-child programmes. Distance to maternity services varies from 1 to 132 km.

This paper did not include police lock-up, courthouse cells or involuntary psychiatric units in the inventory. Information is unavailable regarding trans and non-binary persons, a priority for future work. Access to maternity hospital services is but one critical question regarding reproductive care. Maintenance of the database is challenging.

Incarcerated women are an invisible population. The inventory is the first of its kind and is a useful tool to support sex and gender and health research across jurisdictions.