Qualitative study of women's experiences of safe childbirth in maternity care

Abstract

Few studies have focused on women's childbirth experiences in relation to patient safety. The aim of this study was to explore the meaning of safety as a process phenomenon by outlining women's positive and negative experiences of safety in childbirth. A descriptive explorative design was chosen and 16 interviews were conducted. Qualitative content analysis was used. One main theme emerged: safe childbirth through involvement and guidance, based on four subthemes. The characteristics of women's experiences of safe childbirth included the need to be informed and involved by sharing and receiving trustworthy information. Women's experiences of unsafe childbirth included lack of meaningful and trustworthy information that resulted in feelings of being misled or lulled into a false sense of security. Not being involved evoked feelings of being ignored. In conclusion, this study highlights issues of importance for safe maternity care. The perspectives of childbearing women can contribute to an understanding of how to achieve meaningful improvements to provide safer maternity care.

Organizational strategies to optimize women’s safety during labor and birth: A scoping review

“…Identifying aspects of safety important for the woman may positively influence health outcomes for women, newborns, families, and the organizations that care for them 96 . For the organization, such processes may also assist in mitigating complaints and subsequent litigation claims.…”

Women's Safety Culture in Childbirth and Related Institutional Factors

“…This analysis was completed in three stages: in the first, called pre-analysis, the interviews were transcribed, organized, and skimmed to identify the sections of text that are consistent with the purpose of the study; in the second stage, the material was explored based on semantic equivalence to group the Registry Units (RU) in accordance with the corresponding themes, which made it possible to construct the thematic categories -a researcher on the team who did not participate in the data collection reviewed this second stage of the analysis; finally, in the processing of the results, inferences and interpretations were made 16 in accordance with the terms and assumptions of the Patient Safety Culture. [3][4][5][6][7][8]13 The study complied with the regul atory standards for research involving human beings. The participants were designated here by the professional category and the order in which the interviews were held.…”

“…Pregnant women tend to express the desire to get respect for their autonomy and to feel safe in childbirth, which corroborates the World Health Organization's recommendations regarding the promotion of quality of care for safe motherhood. [3][4] Safety is one of the crucial attributes for the quality of health care and is a global priority. The safety culture aims to prevent errors in the care process and the damage or adverse events caused to patients as a result of these errors, in order to provide safe care to health service clients.…”

Risk management—Evaluation of healthcare professionals' reasoning about and understanding of maternity care

“…Managers and HCPs who engage in risk management create quality relationships that have the potential to protect HCPs and childbearing women from harm (Healy, Humphreys, & Kennedy, ). Few studies have illuminated the influence of interprofessional relationships in safe maternity care (Rönnerhag, Severinsson, Haruna, & Berggren, ; Severinsson et al, ). HCPs' understanding of risk management appears to be inadequately described in the literature.…”

“…This study is part of a larger research programme with the primary objective of implementing and evaluating the WHO model that takes PS into consideration from the perspectives of childbearing women and HCPs (Rönnerhag et al, ; Rönnerhag, Severinsson, Haruna, & Berggren, ; Severinsson, Haruna, Rönnerhag, & Berggren, ; Severinsson et al, ).…”