3. Naming of parts: how should we talk about labour and birth in 2023? - Professor Soo Downe

The famous poem by Henry Reed titled ‘Naming of Parts’ (1942) describes the juxtaposition between newly recruited second world war soldiers being taught the parts of an Enfield rifle, and how they went together with the sounds and sights of nature proceeding as a coherent and oblivious system in the background. In this short talk I will present the poem, and juxtapose it with two approaches to improving maternity care arising from recent maternity reviews. One is based on classic atomized command and control and risk management processes via long lists of specific ‘to do’ actions. The other prioritises the principles and values of ‘simple rules’ that explain the mechanisms that operate in whole systems. I will ask the question, could new Safety II approaches bring us closer to realizing such simple rules for the optimization of maternity care, by balancing what works well equally with what goes wrong?