Publication:
A Comparative Study of Home and Hospital Births, Scientific and Normative Values and their Effects

dc.contributor.author Boland, Cathy en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2021-11-25T12:32:49Z
dc.date.available 2021-11-25T12:32:49Z
dc.date.issued 1989 en_US
dc.description.abstract The integration of technology into birth services has been seen as an appropriate intervention, yet the common use of forceps and anaesthesia in the decade 1920 -1930 predated the use of randomised control trials to evaluate these procedures. There are indications that a number of measures such as living standards and health education, contributed to the lowering of infant and neonatal mortality rates. In this study, data on 51 homebirths and 509 hospital births from the NSW Maternal/Perinatal Statistics Collection are used to compare the outcomes of a cohort of women matched for risk status giving birth at home and in hospital. The analysis shows that there was significantly more morbidity for primiparous women* when Level 3 teaching hospitals were included in the analysis; ie. morbidity in the hospital births decreased when Level 3 teaching hospitals were excluded from the analysis. There were no significant differences in morbidity for multiparous women.** Further analysis of more recent data from the same source indicated a wide range of morbidity among hospitals from 53.2% to 82.5% for low-risk primiparous women. Whether or not a new comparative study of home and hospital births might produce statistically significant results would depend on which hospitals were chosen in the comparative group. Some caution should be used in interpreting the results as the reliability of the data has not yet been ascertained. This would require a comparison of the computerised records with hospital and homebirth recording methods. The conclusion drawn from this analysis indicates that normative variables (commonly held beliefs and values) as well as scientific variables should be considered in the evaluation of birth services. * Primiparous women are women giving birth for the first time. ** Multiparous women have had a previous birth. en_US
dc.identifier.isbn 0858238616 en_US
dc.identifier.issn 1031-9689 en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/33930
dc.language English
dc.language.iso EN en_US
dc.publisher Social Welfare Research Centre, UNSW en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseries Social Welfare Research Centre discussion papers en_US
dc.rights CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 en_US
dc.rights.uri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/ en_US
dc.source Legacy MARC en_US
dc.subject.other Home Births en_US
dc.subject.other Hospital Births en_US
dc.subject.other Birth services en_US
dc.title A Comparative Study of Home and Hospital Births, Scientific and Normative Values and their Effects en_US
dc.type Working Paper en
dcterms.accessRights metadata only access
dspace.entity.type Publication en_US
unsw.accessRights.uri http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_14cb
unsw.publisher.place Sydney en_US
unsw.relation.faculty Arts Design & Architecture
unsw.relation.ispartofworkingpapernumber 12 en_US
unsw.relation.originalPublicationAffiliation Boland, Cathy, Social Policy Research Centre, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW en_US
unsw.relation.school Social Policy Research Centre *
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