Women's and partners' experiences of pregnancy-, birth- and postnatal care. Results from a pilot study
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The purpose of the pilot study was to test two questionnaires, one focusing on women's experiences, the other addressing partners' experiences, as well as testing methods of data collection.
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Key message
A Norwegian White Paper in 2009 emphasizes the importance of a broad user perspective in pregnancy-, birth- and postnatal care. The white paper calls for a national survey conducted by the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services (NOKC) collecting user experience with this part of the health service.
A national survey is planned in 2011- 2012. NOKC has finished a development project that included a postal and electronic pilot survey at Akershus University Hospital. The purpose of the pilot study was to test two questionnaires, one focusing on women's experiences, the other addressing partners' experiences, as well as testing methods of data collection. This paper presents the results from the pilot study.
A total of 342 women responded to the survey, which gives an overall response rate of 47 percent. 95 of the women's partners returned the questionnaire. We do not have sufficient information to calculate a response rate for this sample.
The results indicate that both women and partners have positive experiences with pregnancy-, birth- and postnatal care, but several improvement areas were also identified. There is a tendency that both women and partners are considering pregnancy care with a midwife more positive than the corresponding care from a GP. Women and partners also report more positive experiences from the maternity ward than post-natal ward at the hospital. Questions concerning information consistently have lower scores than other areas, this applies to both pregnancy-, birth- and postnatal care.