Remember This Acronym Next Time You’re Facing a Big Medical Decision: B.R.A.I.N.

(Maria Fabrizio for WPLN and KFF Health News) Gina Conley, an Army veteran in Aberdeen, North Carolina, knew she wanted a low-intervention birth for her first child. But her plan started to go off the rails as soon as she got to the hospital. “Everything that I did not want to happen had happened,” she said. “And I just remember that feeling of being just so utterly defeated.” Her cervix wasn’t dilating quickly, and Conley said her midwife insisted that she take Pitocin to speed up the labor. Later, when she was nearly fully dilated, the midwife asked to break Conley’s amniotic fluid sac, another intervention used to move labor along. Conley agreed to that step, reluctantly. But looking back, she said she didn’t feel comfortable with many of the decisions that day. And Conley doesn’t feel that her providers were fully hearing her. Conley went on to become a birth doula, in part to help other women have better experiences than she had. Her work is not about helping people avoid medical interventions, she said, but helping them engage in shared decision-making, a collaborative approach in which medical providers and patients talk through options and make a choice together. Studies sh...