She can lip-read, she'll be all right: improving maternity care for the deaf and hearing-impaired

In the UK a midwife is unlikely to meet many deaf women during her working life. Therefore very few midwives have a wealth of experience in providing care for these women. Postnatal discussion with one woman showed us that despite our good intentions the care we had given her was inadequate for her individual needs. We recognised that other deaf women were possibly receiving inadequate care. We set out to investigate this, and when we discovered that our suspicions were correct, devised a method that we hoped would improve the care we provided. The process of investigating the needs of deaf women is described in this paper together with the development of a teaching package for student and qualified midwives.