Year: 2026 | Month: September | Volume: 16 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 83-92
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijhsr.20260910
Changing Expectations in Labour Care: The Emergence and Significance of Successive Labour Monitoring Guidelines
Deepa Vijay Mungi
Senior Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, DNB Teacher, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, K.B. Bhabha Hospital, Mumbai, India
Corresponding Author: Deepa Vijay Mungi
ABSTRACT
Labour care today aims to achieve more than a healthy mother and baby. It also seeks to provide a positive childbirth experience through respectful, individualised and evidence-informed care. As expectations of labour care have changed, successive labour monitoring guidelines have emerged in response to these changing expectations.
Labour monitoring is usually taught as a series of guidelines. It is seldom taught as the progression of clinical thinking behind them. Current recommendations describe what to do, but understanding why successive guidelines emerged provides the context in which they should be interpreted and applied.
This narrative review examines the emergence of successive labour monitoring guidelines through the changing expectations of labour care. Rather than presenting a chronological history, it explores why each guideline emerged, the evidence supporting it, its limitations, and the shift in expectations that led to the next stage in the evolution of labour monitoring. Earlier guidelines are not viewed as obsolete, but as appropriate responses to the priorities and understanding of their time.
The review provides clinicians with a practical framework for interpreting labour monitoring guidelines and applying them with informed clinical judgement while maintaining focus on the woman and her childbirth experience.
Key words: Labour monitoring; Partogram; Clinical judgement; Evidence-based medicine; Labour Care Guide; Artificial intelligence