ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the perception of the healthcare professionals of the largest maternity of the state of Paraíba about the insertion of doulas in the care process. This is a qualitative study, with 24 health care professionals, whose instrument of data production was a semi-structured interview. The role of the doula in the assistance to parturient was described as: offer of emotional, physical and informational support. Each of these dimensions has triggered tensions with different characters involved in childbirth, such as psychologists, physiotherapists and physicians. In this scenario, professionals intend to delimit individual techniques/knowledge of each category, in order to ratify their autonomy in the face of the emergence of another figure in the care of the pregnant woman, especially when this character puts in check practices traditionally executed in obstetrics. The genesis of these tensions goes beyond the presence of a ‘new’ subject at the delivery scene, but it is a reflection of the brazilian obstetric scenario, permeated by disputes between care models and performance space. It also raises the need to build a shared care and centered on the parturient.
KEYWORDS
Doulas; Humanizing delivery; Obstetrics; Perinatal care