Person-Centered Decision Making Lesson

It is well established that the birth environment can affect the caregiver’s use of technology and influence the physiology of normal labor and birth. Researchers have demonstrated reduced costs to the healthcare system, with no increase in complications, when healthy people plan to birth in low technology settings with skilled providers, even if some of them actually deliver in the hospital after transfer (36, 37). Hence, public health researchers and human health resource planners globally and state-wide  recommend that maternity care should occur in the lowest resource setting where the person feels safe and comfortable, and can access skilled attendants as appropriate to their individual clinical situation for each labor and birth (15, 17).