What is the active management of labour?
Active Management of Labour (AML), a term given by the British Medical Journal in 1973, describes an approach to labour which was first initiated in 1963 in The National Maternity Hospital (NMH), Dublin, Ireland. Since then AML has continued to evolve, but has remained based on the principles summarised in Active Management of Labour. The philosophy behind AML has always been the prevention of prolonged labour, in particular the prevention of the physical and psychological morbidity that usually follows it. Prolonged labour was first defined as 36 hours in 1963, reduced to 24 hours in 1968 and finally to 12 hours in 1972. Ensuring efficient uterine action and fetal and maternal well-being are the key requirements needed to achieve this and the principles of AML described below, set out the framework within which those targets are achieved. These principles include the importance of antenatal education, the difference between nulliparous and multiparous women, spontaneous and induced la
