Hospital Care at Childbirth: Social Representations of Women and Health Care Professionals

The aim of this comparative study was to investigate social representations of assisted women (20) and health care professionals (20) concerning childbirth assistance in maternities. Forty interviews were made examining two maternities with different approaches to childbirth assistance. In dealing with the data, we used lexicographical analysis and hierarchical descending clustering of texts (ALCESTE software). Among the health care professionals, two distinct representations were found: the first denoting a medicalized vision of assistance, and the second pointing towards an assistance identified with the Humanization of Birth Movement. Among the assisted women, the quality of their relationship with health care professionals seems to be the main influence on the way they represent the received assistance.