Healthy eating in pregnancy, education for midwives: A pre-post intervention study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Midwives have an important role in providing education in healthy eating to pregnant women, which is essential for maternal and foetal health and wellbeing. Importantly, midwives require continual professional development to ensure they provide up-to-date education. METHODS A pre-post intervention study utilised a purpose-designed questionnaire to collect data at three time points. Forty-four midwives completed the pre education questionnaire, 29 of these midwives attended the education intervention (workshop/webinar) and completed the immediately after questionnaire. Nineteen midwives then completed a questionnaire at 6–8 weeks follow-up. The study aimed to evaluate midwives’ knowledge and level of confidence to discuss healthy eating in pregnancy. RESULTS Education in healthy eating improved midwives’ knowledge and level of confidence, which were maintained for six to eight weeks. The mean difference of total scores on knowledge and confidence between pre and immediately after education questionnaires showed a statistically significant improvement in nutrition knowledge (4.93 ± 1.62 vs 7.55 ± 1.55; p<0.001) and confidence level (22.05 ± 6.87 vs 31.48 ± 7.47; p<0.001). In terms of the mode of education, there was a significant increase in total knowledge scores for midwives who attended a workshop compared to a webinar. CONCLUSIONS Overall, healthy eating education improved midwives’ knowledge and confidence immediately after receiving education and also at 6–8 weeks follow-up. This study is unique as it evaluated midwives’ knowledge and level of confidence at 6–8 weeks post education. This study concludes that midwives benefited from receiving further knowledge on cultural food choices, eating behaviours, and dental care.

Knowledge Level of Midwives before and after an Online Training Participation

“…23 Increased knowledge of health workers after attending webinars was found in several studies that have been previously conducted. [23][24][25] The improvement of midwives' knowledge in this study was consistent with another study conducted in Australia that assessed midwives' knowledge at three-time points with the total knowledge score statistically difference in pre to immediate questionnaires and immediate to 6-8 weeks post-workshop/webinar. 24 As stated in Table 1, question number one, "vitamin D has an important role for fetal growth," there is no improvement after intervention since the score is already high (99.7%).…”

A sequential explanatory mixed methods study design: An example of how to integrate data in a midwifery research project

“…Discussion: The findings highlighted that nearly half of the midwives had limited knowledge for daily energy requirements, water intake, iodine requirements, omega-3 and vitamin D requirements before attending the education, whereas, this was improved after the education. [14] Similarly, previous studies reported that midwives have inadequate nutrition knowledge [13] in several areas, including weight gain, dairy serves and iodine requirements. [34] However, limited nutrition knowledge significantly improved after attending nutrition education.…”

“…Midwives' level of knowledge and confidence was investigated prior to, immediately following, and 6-8 weeks after attending a workshop/webinar. [14] Based on the systematic review findings, the following research questions were developed:…”

“…Findings of the quantitative phase have been published separately. [14] 2.2.2 Maintaining credibility and trustworthiness in qualitative data collection and analysis…”

Midwives’ views and experiences of providing healthy eating advice to pregnant women: a qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews

“…The findings from Phase 1 were reported in a separate paper. 11 Phase 2 was a qualitative descriptive study that aimed to obtain an in-depth insight into midwives' views after attending a 2 h healthy eating education workshop/ webinar. This second phase also aimed to explore the midwives' experiences on how they provided healthy eating education to pregnant women after attending the education program.…”