Abstract
The study results were presented with the focus on midwifery. The study indicates that, despite its rather high quality, the Czech maternity care system suffers from a number of shortcomings as regards its psychosocial aspects.
These shortcomings include low involvement of parturients in decision making, poor communication of information and lack of respect for women’s wishes about the conduct of birth but there are also some other aspects where the system appears to show its weak parts: lack of psychological support experienced by women in the course of delivery and postpartal period and detached, superior and routine approach of some caregivers, especially at university maternity hospitals and hospitals with more than 800 deliveries per year.