(Ungradedachievement) /
There is no further grading in the assessment of this unit.
Assessor / Andrea Beeney / Diploma / Nursing and Midwifery / Subject / Study Skills
Unit / English for Academic Study / Code / CBF650 / Credits / 3
Task Title / Critical Reading / Task no. for unit / 1/3 / AC / 1.1, 1.2
Student / A Student / This work is my own / signature / ASTUDENT
Evaluative
Comment
Article 1 is a news article designed to inform the readers of people’s opinions of freebirthing and whether it is safe or not. Looking at the article the key facts are-
- Around 20-30 babies are ‘freebirthed’ a year, but this is expected to increase with independent midwives being outlawed
- Midwives and obstetricians are not discouraging freebirth
- Women have the right to choose their preferred/more comfortable labour.
The main argument of this text is whether freebirthing is a safe practice or if women are unnecessarily putting themselves or their babies at risk. Most of the people involved in this article seem to think that freebirthing is safe. With Mervi Jokinen, who is the president of the European midwives association, saying “if you look back through history, women would go to a place on their own. That’s thought to be the best way to birth from a physiological point of view. You need to zone out, you need to find space, so your body can get on with it”.
There are a lot of people’s opinions in this text, such as the opinion of Valentina Cruz. She believes her first delivery ended in an emergency C section after a “cascade of intervention” from her midwives and was left feeling as though “the midwives didn’t trust her body’s ability to give birth without intervention”.
The article says that a vast majority of freebirthers believe women could give birth more safely and happily without medical interference. One woman, Sarah Currie, who, in a previous pregnancy wanted to have a midwife assisted home birth, was told one was not available on the day she went into labour, then went on to have a home birth where paramedics turned up. Preparing for her next birth, she says ‘"I read up on unassisted childbirth, or freebirth. It seemed to me that the risks weren't high, assuming you had a healthy pregnancy and no underlying health conditions. So I decided to go for it. I was absolutely committed to a home birth – being in your own space makes all the difference, as far as I'm concerned – and that was my priority. If the health trust could have promised me a midwife, I'd have opted to have one; but as they couldn't, I thought this was the best way of getting the birth I wanted, with no uninvited paramedics."
Even with the belief that freebirthing is safe and preferable, one woman, Joanne Purdie, says that they had “layer after layer of safety nets in place”. She had plenty of contact with her midwives and had all the normal scans and appointments she should. The midwives and an ambulance crew even did a site visit so they would know where to go if something were to go wrong.
She goes on to say that “a woman’s body knows what to do. I’ve watched cats give birth, and they do it in a straightforward way because they’re left to do what nature wants them to do”.
The author of this text shows her bias at the end of the article when she admits that she had a freebirth with her 4th child. It wasn’t planned to be that way, but she believes her baby “benefited from a drug-free, intervention-free, natural delivery.”
Article 2 is a paper based on a lecture on an evaluation of a normal birth programme. Viewing this article we can see that the key facts are-
- The KCND (Keeping Childbirth Natural and Dynamic) programme was a large complex service change across Scotland
- Evaluating the programme was a problem for the research team
- The KCND had many limitations
- The KCND was used to generate a theory of how, why and where to intervene during labour and childbirth.
The main argument of this article is whether the KCND was successful and how and why it worked. Research teams had problems evaluating the programme as it was simultaneously implemented across the country and they couldn’t compare it to anything else, like they could have if it was tested in a selection of locations.
There is a lack of opinion in this text. It tells you facts of how the programme accomplished in some areas and failed and needed amending in others, but gives no opinion of the writer.
It tells you of the limitations in the programme and how it affected different people. “The changes instigated by the KCND programme were directed at the level of service organisation and clinical practice, yet many of the anticipated outcomes would impact the level of women receiving maternity care”.
This article is bias as it mostly encourages the KCND and does not give any evidence of how maternity units and hospitals were run or how they worked before the KCND programme was enrolled.
These are two very different types of articles. Article 1 is aimed at the public and is descriptive and informal. It is asking whether it is safe for women to be giving birth without medical intervention in a way that people can read and understand. It is written this way as it is the general public that is going to read it. It needs to be persuasive but give facts and show others opinions at the same time. There is a lot more opinion than fact. The descriptive and informal language used in this article is designed to make you think and produce your own opinions.
Whereas article 2 is formal and complex. It is giving knowledge of how a whole new system worked, failed and was amended across an entire country. There is a lot more fact than opinion in this article. It uses complex language which makes it difficult to understand and evaluate. It is written for other professionals to read and take facts about the KCND and understand its failings and successes.
Although the articles relate to each other, the articles are completely separate. They are aimed at two different types of people, two different types of language are used, and are written in two different contexts. It is also a case of article 1 being an article of opinion, and article 2 being an article of fact.
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© AIM Awards 2013 April 2014. Version 5