Women's views of continuity of information provided during and after pregnancy: A qualitative interview study

Abstract

Straightforward transfer of care from pregnancy to the postpartum period is associated with health benefits and is desired by women worldwide. Underpinning this transfer of care is the sharing of information between healthcare professionals and the provision of consistent information to women. In this qualitative study, two aspects of continuity of information were examined; first the information passed on from midwife to health visitor regarding a woman and her baby before the health visitor meets the woman postnatally and second, the consistency of information received by women from these two healthcare professionals (the main healthcare providers during and after pregnancy in England). To be eligible for the study, women had to have had a baby in England within 12 months prior to the interview. Participants also needed to be able to read and speak English and be over 18 years old. Recruitment of participants was via word of mouth and social media. Twenty‐nine mothers were interviewed of whom 19 were first time mothers. The interviews took place in the summer and autumn of 2016 and were transcribed verbatim and analysed using Framework Analysis. Two overarching themes were identified: not feeling listened to and information inconsistencies. Women reported little experience of midwives and health visitors sharing information about their care, forcing women to repeat information. This made women feel not listened to and participants recommended that healthcare professionals share information; prioritising information about labour, mental health, and chronic conditions. Women had mixed experiences regarding receiving information from midwives and health visitors, with examples of both consistent and inconsistent information received. To avoid inconsistent information, joint appointments were recommended. Findings from this study clearly suggest that better communication pathways need to be developed and effectively implemented for midwives and health visitors to improve the care that they provide to women.

Support during the postnatal period: Evaluating new mothers' and midwives' experiences of a new, coordinated postnatal care model in a midwifery clinic in Sweden

“…The concepts of management continuity, informational continuity and relational continuity [32] were useful in describing continuity of care in the postnatal period. Care in terms of the three types of continuity in postnatal care has shown that parents want to have access to care based on their own needs [33,34,40]. There is evidence that continuity of care starting in the prenatal period has a great impact on mothers' mental and physical health, especially when the three types of continuity were highlighted together [34].…”

Postpartum opportunistic advice in primary care for women who have had gestational diabetes: a qualitative study of health care professionals’ views

“…The need for a systematic, universal and effective approach for following up women with GDM has long been recognised [16]. GDM recall registers would be relatively straightforward to set up in primary care, and have been shown to be successful in other countries [17,18] but ensuring that health visitors are aware of women who would benefit from opportunistic advice around T2D risk is more problematic. There appears to be no national consistent approach to handover information from midwife to health visitor, each Health Board having local arrangements in place and midwives sharing information with the health visitor they feel appropriate.…”

Escala de qualidade da informação

“…Vários autores realçam a má qualidade da informação transmitida como podendo ser geradora de mal estar, ansiedade, baixa autoestima e depressão (Henshaw et al, 2018;Olander et al, 2019;Zhang, et al, 2021) Percebemos que a maternidade é um período peculiar da vida da mulher em que ela se encontra ávida por aprender e se interessa por tudo quanto diga respeito à mãe e à criança, como evidenciado por Olander et al (2019), sendo importante, como referem Slomian et al (2017), as mães receberem informação de qualidade.…”

“…A qualidade dos cuidados está asociada à qualidade da informação e da comunicação enfermeiro cliente, sendo importante a forma como a informação é percebida (Amoah et al, 2019), pois os aspetos ligados à mãe e à criança são alvo de grande preocupação por parte das mães (Olander, Aquino, Chhoa, Harris, Lee & Bryar, 2019) A informação transmitida durante a gravidez pelos profissionais de saúde diminui as queixas e aumenta a qualidade de vida das grávidas pelo que se deve ter em consideração não apenas as queixas e preocupações da grávida como a qualidade da informação que lhe é transmitida (Yikar & Nazik, 2019). A educação pré-natal é um dos fatores de proteção para a depressão pré-natal, revelando a importancia da mesma (Zhang, Wang, Cui, Yuan, Huang, & Zhou, 2021), sendo que as mães que apresentam síntomas depressivos no período pós-parto também revelam a necessidade de informação de qualidade (Slomian et al, 2017) Num período tão importante na vida da mulher e da sua familia a atenção dos enfermeiros para com as clientes tem que ser redobrada para evitar que as mães se sintam ignoradas, pela escassa partilha de informação ou pela sua inconsistência (Olander et al, 2019), ou por outro lado se sintam baralhadas e com baixa autoestima pela enorme quantidade de informação ou informação pouco sistematizada e até contraditória (Henshaw et al, 2018) Conhecer a qualidade da informação transmitida pelos profissionais às suas clientes, é uma necessidade, de modo a dirigir o cuidado em função das especificidades de cada mulher e sua familia (Rasteiro, Santos, & Coutinho, 2021) por forma a a experiencia da maternidade possa ser vivida na sua plenitude.…”