Working With Pain 2: Humanising Pharmacological Analgesia

For this second paper in the Working with Pain Essentials series, we examine how pharmacological analgesia administration and care can be humanised across midwifery and maternity care services. The hope is that childbearing and birthing women can benefit from birth practices, environments and approaches to care that are often only available in midwifery-led settings (home and birth centres, for example). In this article, the United Kingdom (UK) is used as the context to discuss the history of pain management in birth care but the practice principles explored can be applied in other localities and contexts.