Being a midwife or doing midwifery?

As a profession, we need to be more conscious of the way in which our discipline has been subsumed into techno-rational science and away from our 'with women' focus. The ACMI Philosophy says that we value 'being with' women as the foundation for midwifery practice, therefore the concept 'being with' should be a competency which is reflected in the ACMI Professional Standards and Competencies. Currently, there is no Professional Standard for "Being With Women": all midwifery care has been subsumed under the rubric of problem-solving. The problem-solving approach is part of the modernist, techno-rational approach to human life experiences. Problem-solving, I am claiming, has been over-generalised and imposed upon human experiences where it is not appropriate. This paper argues against adopting problem-solving as the framework for practice because this means that every aspect of midwifery care has to be problematised. This paper concludes by suggesting one way in which our philosophy could be honoured in our professional standards and competencies.