Being obese or gaining excessive weight during pregnancy can increase health risks for mother and baby. Adopting a healthy diet and increasing physical activity reduces these risks and has long-term health benefits for women. Despite this, women do not always maintain a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy. Aim To explore the factors that encouraged and prevented a diverse group of women to maintain a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy. Methods A total of 12 women participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews, underpinned by the theory of planned behaviour. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim then subject to deductive thematic analysis. Findings Four themes emerged: women's knowledge of a healthy lifestyle, sociocultural influences, physical health and health professional support. These influenced women's intentions and actual behaviours during pregnancy. Conclusions Enhanced health professional advice may motivate women to adopt a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy. This could be through new means such as health technology.

There is a marked increase in the number of General Practitioner (GP) organisations across Europe providing out of hours (OOH) emergency primary care services whereby GPs and/or Nurse Practitioners (NPs), provide telephone consultations to patients (Giesen et al., 2007a, McKinstry et al., 2009, Derkx et al., 2009). This has been an important development to manage the rising demand for health care with increasingly scarce resources (Blank et al., 2012, Purc-Stephenson and Thrasher, 2010) and also reduces unnecessary attendance at accident and emergency departments or home visits by GPs (Bunn et al., 2005, Roberts et al., 2008)... In this study we describe the characteristics of telephone consultation calls made by pregnant women to an OOH service run by a GP co-operative and also to compare and contrast the differences between the way the calls were handled by GPs and Nurse Practitioners (NPs). The NPs were qualified and registered nurses experienced in primary care or emergency care settings and none were practicing.

In this chapter we explore issues of psychosocial resilience and risk related to asylum seeking and refugee women during the perinatal period, drawing on experiences from three diverse European countries; the United Kingdom (UK), Malta and the Netherlands. First we define the terms asylum seekers and refugees to allow us to focus on the issues that pertain specifically to women experiencing this form of migration. We also note the prevalence of migration in contemporary society. We explore recent research on asylum seeking and refugee women in the perinatal period to identify; the barriers women face in accessing care in their reception countries and their experiences of perinatal care. Through this work, the challenges faced by healthcare professionals to provide culturally appropriate and high quality care to these women who face a range of psychosocial challenges are also highlighted. We suggest possible ways to address some of these challenges including how health professionals can actively build on the resilience of asylum seeking and refugee women to improve their perinatal experiences. We conclude by focusing on the implications of these findings; drawing on examples of good practice from the UK, Netherland and Malta to provide recommendations for practice and service development.

In October 2002 the ex-RCIVI director of education and research Rosaline Steele wrote an editorial in the RCM Midwives Journal on problem-based learning (PBL), entitled 'the emperor's new clothes or a new way of seeing?' This is a response to that article.