The practice of nurse midwives in public health policy in humane delivery care in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Based on the dialectic approach, the purpose of this study was to analyze the nursing practice in public policies to make birth more humane, identifying the nurses' objective and subjective concepts in birth assistance. There were interviews with nurse-midwives, and direct observation of the reality lived in this birth setting. The investigation was conducted in three public maternity hospitals of the city of Rio de Janeiro in which childbirth assisted by a nurse has been institutionalized under the rules of the policy of humanization. The analysis of the content of the interviews was compared to observations of the setting. In this confrontation, the practice of nurse-midwives arose from the contradiction between the policies of humane treatment and the patterns resulting from the biomedical model that prevails in nursing training in the institutional context.