Clinical Decision Making in Midwifery Practice: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The Background of this Thesis is based on reviewing 23 articles using manifest content analysis based on frequency of its occurrence and provided a view of clinical decision making’s components: Concept of Normal Birth, Maternity Care Determinants and Environment. The aim of this study is to gain deeper knowledge on CDM within midwifery and find answer(s) to “what affects midwives’ clinical decision-making?” through a systematic review and analysis of academic journal articles within the last 5 years, available in Cinahl. The findings of this study are based on both manifest and latent content analysis of 19 articles. The meaning units derived from analysis of articles were inductively classified concluding to an assistive head theme of Mother along with main themes of Midwives’ knowledge, Midwives’ principles, and Organizations’ setting.

In the result of this study, communication skills, postpartum/prepartum care, documentation and fear of blame were not found. Intuition, midwife-led/obstetric-led care approach, and birthplace’s effect were among the findings not occurred in the background section. The outcome of this study could have been indicating different aspects of clinical judgment if ethics and ethical challenges were included in the search keywords. This study can be a basis for further research combining the ethics and ethical dilemma in decision making matrix, how intuition is regarded in CDM-midwifery practice, and effect of birthplace on CDM.