Physiology of Normal Labor and Delivery
- To understand and recognize a normal labor pattern.
- To understand the mechanism of labor for a cephalic presentation.
- To understand the meaning of the following germs: Presentation, position, lie, station, effacement, dilatation.
- To understand the phases and stages of labor.
Physiology of Normal Labor and
Delivery
- Normal labor
Emanuel Friedman in his elegant treatise on labor (1978) stated correctly that "the clinical features of uterine contractions namely frequency, intensity, and duration cannot be relied upon as measures of progression in labor nor as indices of normality. Except for cervical dilatation and fetal decent, none of the clinical features of the parturient patient appears to be useful in assessing labor progression." Friedman sought to select criteria that would limit normal labor and thus be able to identify significant abnormalities of labor. These limits, admittedly arbitrary, appear to be logical and clinically useful. The graphic representation of labor plotting descent and dilatation against time has become known as the Friedman curve. It, or a modification of it, is used extensively to evaluate laboring patients.
Figure 2. Graphic portrayal of the relationship between cervical dilatation and elapsed time in labor (heavy line) and between fetal station and time (light line). Labor has been divided functionally into a preparatory division (including latent and acceleration phases of the dilatation curve), a dilatational division comprising only the linear phase of maximum slope of dilatation, and a pelvic division encompassing the linear phase of maximum descent.
Greetings to you all, this year will be an exciting year for all nurses and nursing students in the St. Benedict's school of Nursing in Wewak, located on the west part of the Island of Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean. This is my first year of teaching and I am grateful for the opportunity given to teach the digital age nursing students to make use of the available technologies right at their finger-tips. The aim of this blogging with students is to create a community of inquiry in higher education level for effective adult teaching-learning process. By the end of this semester (one) in the year 2020, students should achieve a GPA of 2.6 or above, as a result of this blogging for participatory and includes self-directed learning which also capture application of theory to practice in nursing education. Especially, transitioning from Student to Graduate nurse. 