Supportive care during labor: a guide for busy nurses.

Removing the barriers to the provision of supportive nursing care during labor will require much effort by multidisciplinary teams within each institution. Yet even without such reform, an individual nurse can easily provide crucial elements of supportive care. This article suggests many practical techniques that nurses can use to support women during the stresses of labor. Each requires only a minute or two, and all are partly based on recruiting and teaching the partner to carry out some of them.