Dataset Information

A qualitative exploration of women's experiences of antenatal and intrapartum care: The need for a woman-centred approach in the Peruvian Amazon.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To explore women's experiences and perceptions of antenatal and intrapartum care in the Peruvian Amazon, including their perceived motivators, enablers and barriers to accessing care.

Design

Interpretive descriptive qualitative study using semi-structured face-to-face interviews.

Setting

Primary healthcare centre, Iquitos, Peru.

Participants

Women (n = 20) attending the healthcare centre who had given birth in the past 6 months.

Measures

Interviews were conducted using a female interpreter, transcribed clean verbatim and thematically analysed.

Findings

Four core themes relating to antenatal care were interpreted. (1) Perceived knowledge of antenatal care and its importance: women generally understood the importance of care, mainly for their baby's health rather than their own. (2) Appointments and information received: women wanted more appointments to facilitate greater depth of information relating to their pregnancy. (3) Interaction with healthcare practitioners: women felt they received inadequate attention, care lacked continuity and they were often uncomfortable with male practitioners. (4) Perceived motivators, barriers and enablers to accessing antenatal care: Knowledge of the importance of care acted as the main motivator. Few direct barriers were identified, other than employment. Free care and ease of access enabled attendance. Two core themes were interpreted relating to intrapartum care. (1) Expectations and preferences for labour and delivery: the need for a safe environment for childbirth was acknowledged. (2) Actual experiences of labour and delivery: for most women labour and delivery experiences were not as they had expected. Women objected less to male professionals during labour than antenatal care.

Conclusions and implications for practice

Women reported negative experiences of both antenatal and intrapartum care. There is clearly a need for a more woman-centred approach to care and service provision. Ideally, this would involve employing more staff, acknowledging the implications on resources, improving attitudes towards women, facilitating continuity of care, and allowing patient choice to give women greater involvement.

SUBMITTER: Marsland H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6322728 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

A qualitative exploration of women's experiences of antenatal and intrapartum care: The need for a woman-centred approach in the Peruvian Amazon.

Marsland Harriet H Meza Graciela G de Wildt Gilles G Jones Laura L

PloS one 20190107 1

<h4>Objective</h4>To explore women's experiences and perceptions of antenatal and intrapartum care in the Peruvian Amazon, including their perceived motivators, enablers and barriers to accessing care.<h4>Design</h4>Interpretive descriptive qualitative study using semi-structured face-to-face interviews.<h4>Setting</h4>Primary healthcare centre, Iquitos, Peru.<h4>Participants</h4>Women (n = 20) attending the healthcare centre who had given birth in the past 6 months.<h4>Measures</h4>Interviews w ...[more]

PMID: 30615634

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Project description:BACKGROUND:The Preterm Birth Initiative-Rwanda is conducting a 36-cluster randomized controlled trial of group antenatal and postnatal care. In the context of this trial, we collected qualitative data before and after implementation. The purpose was two-fold. First, to inform the design of the group care program before implementation and second, to document women's experiences of group care at the mid-point of the trial to make ongoing programmatic adjustments and improvements. METHODS:We completed 8 focus group discussions among women of reproductive age before group care implementation and 6 focus group discussions among women who participated in group antenatal care and/or postnatal care at 18 health centers that introduced the model, approximately 9?months after implementation. RESULTS:Before implementation, focus group participants reported both enthusiasm for the potential for support and insight from a group of peers and concern about the risk of sharing private information with peers who may judge, mock, or gossip. After implementation, group care participants reported benefits including increased knowledge, peer support, and more satisfying relationships with providers. When asked about barriers to group care participation, none of them cited concern about privacy but instead cited lack of financial resources, lack of cooperation from a male partner, and long distances to the health center. Finally, women stated that the group care experience would be improved if all participants and providers arrived on time and remained focused on the group care visit throughout. DISCUSSION:These results are consistent with other published reports of women's perceptions of group antenatal care, especially increased pregnancy- and parenting-related knowledge, peer support, and improved relationships with health care providers. Some results were unexpected, especially the consequences of staff allocation patterns that resulted in providers arriving late for group visits or having to leave during group visits to attend to other facility services, which diminished women's experiences of care. CONCLUSION:Group antenatal and postnatal care provide compelling benefits to women and families. If the model requires the addition of human resources at the health center, intensive reminder communications, and large-scale community outreach to benefit the largest number of pregnant and postnatal mothers, those additional resources required must be factored into any future decision to scale a group care model. TRIAL REGISTRATION:This trial is registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03154177 .

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Dataset Information

A qualitative exploration of women's experiences of antenatal and intrapartum care: The need for a woman-centred approach in the Peruvian Amazon.

Objective

Design

Setting

Participants

Measures

Findings

Conclusions and implications for practice

Publications

A qualitative exploration of women's experiences of antenatal and intrapartum care: The need for a woman-centred approach in the Peruvian Amazon.

Similar Datasets

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