https://doi.org/10.4081/mem.2025.1642
Taking patients’ embodied knowledge seriously in maternity care. Epistemological and ethical issues
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
The epistemic dimension of the clinical encounter is crucial, and the maternal context is no exception: whether or not the knowledge provided by patients during labor and birth is valued can have a crucial impact on the clinical relationship. To explore this aspect, I will first attempt to show the potentially negative epistemic and ethical implications of ignoring the embodied knowledge provided by patients, both for patients themselves and for health care professionals, by highlighting the specificity of the maternal health care context. I will then suggest that because of the relevance of these harms, it is crucial to understand the source of this behavior, and that vice epistemology may be a useful conceptual framework for doing so. In particular, I will argue that a sui generis form of epistemic arrogance may be a valid candidate for uncovering, and hopefully addressing, one of the causes of this phenomenon. I will conclude that one of the primary causes of the disregard for patients’ relevant embodied knowledge lies at the institutional level and its focus on efficiency as profit maximization. Thus, the goal should be to advocate for a change in the overall ethos and epistemic policies of health care institutions.
How to Cite
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.