Denise Tiran is a midwife, lecturer, complementary practitioner and an international authority on maternity complementary medicine. In her new book, The Business of Maternity Care, she offers advice and guidance for midwives and doulas who want to establish a maternity-related business, offering services such as pregnancy complementary therapies, antenatal classes, lactation support or full doula care. Read an extract below in which Denise discusses why more people are looking to set up their own businesses in this field.
Midwives working in the NHS are increasingly disillusioned with the care they are able to provide for women (discussions with numerous midwives on courses, at conferences, by telephone and on social media). Many feel that the demands of midwifery practice today do not meet the ideals that caused them to enter the profession in the first place. The workload is phenomenal, with a risk-averse dependence on physio-pathological monitoring and the prevention or management of complications. Midwives have little time or energy to provide the psycho-emotional and social support that is so much a part of holistic maternity care. Continue reading