Professionalism and
Professionalism and
the Midwife
by Laura Barandes
What is Professionalism?
The current thinking
on the concept of professionalism is that it is not simply a system
whereby the different professions develop according to the same set
of steps. In other words, the argument used to be that each trade
went through a series of recognizable stages whereby it became a
profession, irrespective of its relationship to other trades. The
newer idea is instead that professionalism involves constant
competition between different expertise over the same space. These
struggles for legitimate authority are termed "turf wars" by the
leading theorist on the subject, Andrew Abbott.
The constant competition for authority, or ownership of professional space, is fueled by the tools of law, the media, and abstract theory. Each of these mechanisms can be employed to designate certain spaces as belonging to one profession or another:
Laws
Laws which enforce a particular profession and professional space are perhaps the most direct mechanism for establishing authority. The legal system often provides concrete boundaries which solidify the jurisdictions of certain professions. For instance, only licensed MD's can prescribe medications to patients. This restriction effectively excludes all others from performing this function.
Popular images influence public perception on a daily -- almost minute-by-minute -- basis. We are, as a society, inundated by information. The media's acceptance of doctors as the primary legitimate source of health care does much to ensure that the public begins to view them as such. If television, newspapers, magazines, and other forms of media only report or show women giving birth in hospitals, the audience has a predisposition to view this situation as the norm.
This mechanism is the one employed from within the profession itself. In order to separate itself from simple practitioners (people who cut, stitch, and medicate), the medical profession has developed a complicated abstract theory. Language is an example of the way that doctors often attempt to distance themselves from other people. The jargon that doctors use is symbolic of the special knowledge they possess, a constant reminder of their legitimate ownership of that professional space.
Yet, medical professionals must strike a
careful balance between practical application of skills and their
abstract theory. If they focus too exclusively on practical
application, anyone who masters some of those particular skills could
claim legitimate ownership of part of the space. Once the skills
become separated too greatly from the theory, they can be coopted by
outsiders. On the other hand, if medical professionals focus too
heavily on theory, they risk alienating their patients to the extent
that these consumers will look for more intelligible help elsewhere.
The recent explosion of homeopathic remedies is an example of people
looking for treatment and service that they can understand and in
which they can be more equal participants. Thus, the medical
profession must carefully weigh their emphasis on practical
application and abstract theory.
How Does Medical Professionalism Apply to
Pregnancy and Birth?
The models that
abstract theory allows professional groups to construct are often
applied to issues outside of the original authoritative space. For
instance, while sexual disfunction was for many years considered to
be a psychological disorder, the emergence of Viagra as a remedy has shifted sexual
disfunction into the medical model. As Abbott notes, "it is with
abstraction that American medicine claims all deviance, the
abstraction of its all-powerful disease metaphor."1 In the same way, the medical profession has applied
its disease metaphor to pregnancy and birth, shifting them out of
natural and woman-centered life experiences into a category requiring
physician intervention and the ever-looming assumption of high-risk.
In other words, "the professions," in this case the medical
community, "did not serve disembodied needs but rather imposed both
definition of needs and manner of service on atomized
customers."2
Pregnancy and birth have become caught up in the discourse of
illness, necessitating medical care and drawing them into the "turf"
of professional authority.
Selective History of Medical
Professionalism Regarding Birth
If hospitals were not, statistically
speaking, safer places to give birth, why did women begin to use
them? Why was the cultural myth constructed such that hospitals were
regarded as better than the home as the location of birth? The answer
is that women saw the medical profession -- and by extension the
hospitals -- as being able to provide relief from pain. The ideology
of pain was a force strong enough to overshadow the infection risks
and surgical mistakes that were far more common in the hospital
setting than in the home. As the birthing process was moved to the
site of medical professionalism, utilizing the practices of licensed
professionals, these practices soon became accepted as normal
interventions. Capitalizing on the fact that they could sometimes
produce a baby from an otherwise insurmountable crisis, doctors soon
coopted all of the birthing processes into their illness metaphor.
Only within this model, where treatment was expected, could the
medical processionals claim jurisdiction through "necessary"
practices.3
Why Hasn't Midwifery Become a Profession?
There are several
reasons why midwifery has not gone through the process of becoming a
profession. The premises on which midwifery is based actually, in
many ways, stand in complete opposition to the methodology that
guides professional establishment and maintenance.
Midwifery is largely based on incorporation and shared learning. In other words, midwives do not compete for authority in the same way that medical professionals do. They most readily incorporate new medical knowledge and integrate their own experiences with those of other women, both birth attendants and those giving birth. While the medical community would be careful about taking on any practices of midwives, often for fear of losing any professional authority or "turf," the midwife does not operate with such an exclusionary methodology.
While medical professionals often employ special language to create a separation between themselves and those they treating, midwives strive for exactly the opposite. They want the woman they attend to be an active and authoritative participant in the pregnancy and birth. While the doctor works "on" the woman, the midwife works "with" the woman.
The knowledge that midwives employ is gained largely through experience, rather than a uniform body of objective information. To the extent that there is a type of "theory," it concerns a conscious emphasis on the woman's birthing experience and does not serve the purpose of distancing the midwife from the woman she is attending.
Birth and The Internet
It is interesting to
examine the ways in which the medical profession uses the internet in
comparison to midwifery associations/groups. Performing a rudimentary
search for the phrase "OBGYN," one finds that most of the websites
are geared toward the OBGYN's themselves. There are a few that
advertise for patients, but the majority are sources of information
for the internal professional community.
In contrast, when searching for "midwife," one finds references to a mixture of schools that provide training, sources for women looking for a midwife, but most often sites that contain large amounts of information for women interested in the birthing process. These latter examples usually include links to detailed birthing experiences of women. In other words, the midwives seem more focused on creating an interface between themselves and birthing women -- in addition to creating a forum for women to share their experiences -- rather than creating a network of midwives. This evidence supports the contention that midwives emphasize connection and shared experience in contrast to the distancing performed by the medical professionals.
http://www.musc.edu/nursing/midwife/homepage.htm
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dswalker/umhome.html
http://www.efn.org/~osm/
http://www.fensende.com/Users/swnymph/Midwife/
http://www.birthcenters.org/
http://www.SoCalBirth.org/
http://www.midwives.org.nz/
How Does Technology Fit In?
While fully
acknowledging the many benefits that medical technology has brought
to pregnancy and birth, these advancements have often meant the
sacrificing of personal autonomy for women. Yet, there are ways that
women can take back some of that autonomy, utilizing technology. The
internet has become a fertile (excuse the term) place for discussion
and the sharing of experiences regarding pregnancy and birth. A woman
interested in learning more about what kinds of options she has for
birthing can find a myriad of different resources and personal
accounts from which to glean information. This information,
furthermore, exists outside of the technocratic model though it
ironically uses technology. In the technocratic model, science and
strict learning of objective information occupy the legitimate space,
while experiential knowledge is relegated to the backseat -- if not
out of the car altogether. With the internet, women can access
experiential knowledge in a way that has not been possible since
families have become more nuclear, populations more urban, and
information less experiential. Here are a few example of what a woman
might find with a simple search for "pregnancy and birth":
NOTES:1 Abbot, Andrew Delano. 1988. The System of Professions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2 ibid
3 ibid
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