Making midwifery decisions.

Abstract

In order to share practice decision making with women, midwives need to understand their own tacit knowledge and some of the heuristic processes used to arrive at clinical decisions. Arguing that midwifery decision making is intuitive and artful is insufficient defence when accounting for professional practice. Explicit reasoning, individual and shared, should be well to the fore. Contrary to received wisdom, expert practitioners can share their midwifery reasoning with junior colleagues. Role modelling decision making process involves the senior midwife in understanding her own tacit knowledge and coming to terms with practice discussion as a pursuit of understanding, rather than a blame culture activity.