The moral compass

: women’s experiences of excellent midwives

Abstract

For midwifery practitioners, the concept of excellence is central to the ethos of quality midwifery care (DH 2009, NMC 2009) and although midwives are being asked to aspire to ‘a standard of excellence’ (DH 2009), the meaning of ‘excellence’ for both women and midwifery practitioners has not been defined. The focus of this study is to understand excellence at a personal level, what makes some midwives ‘stand out’ and what it means to ‘be’ an excellent midwife, from the service users perspective.

Date of Award	Aug 2011
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Kay Aranda (Supervisor) & Valerie Hall (Supervisor)