Understanding the Everyday Moral Practices of Midwives and Intrapartum Nurses

Abstract

The authors use Margaret Urban Walker's expressive-collaborative model of morality to illuminate the everyday practices and knowledge of midwives and intrapartum nurses as moral practices and knowledge. They provide examples of these moral practices and knowledge by drawing on qualitative studies of intrapartum care. Using Walker's model to interpret the findings of these studies, they identify 3 themes: creating a space for relationship, encountering morally uninhabitable environments, and renegotiating the moral-social order through advocacy. The spaces that nurses and midwives create for relationship with labouring women reveal to them some of their moral responsibilities. However, nurses and midwives encounter environmental constraints: Hierarchical arrangements within teams and institutions constrain their ability to enact their moral responsibilities, rendering the environment morally uninhabitable at times. They understand that in order to renegotiate these arrangements they must advocate for women in labour.