Searching for a Well on the Antepartum Service

Women admitted to inpatient antepartum services are often navigating unexpected obstetric complications. Their tenuous circumstances may persist for days, weeks, or even months, and at times result in extended inpatient stays. Within these admissions, the weight of uncertain maternal-fetal outcomes disrupts any constancy found in the daily routines of rounding, monitoring, and intervention. What does it look like for clinicians to accompany patients amid such uncertainty? Uncertainty and vulnerability also characterized the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (John 4:1-42). But in their encounter, the woman found herself known and heard, Jesus revealed himself as Israel's Messiah, and the woman became an evangelist and disciple in her community. Their encounter was characterized by vulnerable truthfulness, respect, and reverence for the other's story, and treating each other as ends rather than as means. Intertwining theological reflection on the story of the Samaritan woman at the well with narration of selected experiences of women admitted to the antepartum service, the authors explore how the transformative encounter of the Samaritan woman and Jesus might inform care of women on modern-day antepartum services. The encounter at the well can encourage clinicians to embrace "well person care," a model of care focused on vulnerability, truthfulness, and respect that seeks to care not only for patients' immediate medical needs but also addresses the "thirst behind the thirst."