A handy guide to maternity care | |
A guide to effective care in pregnancy and childbirth. Murray Enkin, Marc Keirse, James Neilson et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 (525 pp). ISBN: 0 19 263173 X. |
Evidence-based medicine
aims to bring together the science and the art of medicine; that is, the combination of method (epidemiological and statistical) and clinical judgement which tailors individual treatment to each patient. Good doctors use both expertise and the best available external evidence and neither alone is good enough.
A guide to effective care in pregnancy and childbirth brings to clinicians, in an accessible handbook, a succinct and very readable summary of the evidence gleaned from clinical trials in maternity care. While individual clinical situations will always demand individual judgement, the onus is on us to base practice on available information about treatments which have been proven to be effective or, conversely, proven to be of harm. The book's strengths are its scientific rigour, its readability and its immediate applicability to daily practice in maternity care. It draws together, in an accessible format, the enormous amount of information available in the medical literature and in the Cochrane library. It provides a summary of the current state of the evidence (or lack of it) for effective care in pregnancy. Those who seek a more detailed discussion of the clinical research which led to the conclusions drawn will, however, be disappointed and will need to seek it from other sources, including the Cochrane library. It is a book to dip into frequently when clinical dilemmas arise, or when someone, patient or colleague, asks, "Why do you do it that way?". It is highly recommended for medical and midwifery practitioners, both trainees and those more experienced. Christine K Bessell
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