Maternity report
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Following feedback gathered from case studies, conversations with service users, concerns raised by community groups, and discussions with stakeholders, Healthwatch Greenwich conducted a qualitative study on the experience of maternity care in Greenwich amongst English-speaking women of colour from a migrant or refugee background. This included community pre and postnatal services such as community midwives, health visitors and baby clinics, as well as hospital-based anti-natal, delivery, and postnatal care at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH). They carried out in-depth interviews with seven women who all had experience of giving birth in Greenwich in the last two years.
They identified key differences in the level of satisfaction and perception of the quality of maternity care between community-based care and hospital services. Overall, the women we spoke to had positive experiences with their midwifery and community-based care and poorer experiences with in and outpatient maternity care.
The positive aspects of community maternity care experience related to strong levels of emotional and practical support received, as well as the degree of information provided that enabled women to make informed choices, empowering personal autonomy.
The negative experiences of hospital based maternity care arose from two main themes –
- institutional and administrative issues, such as difficulty organising appointments, long waiting times, and lack of continuity of care, and
- communication styles of healthcare professionals, such as a lack of adequate information and/or not signposting to additional sources of support and information, a lack of insight on the impact of poor communication for the recipient, and the feeling for women of not being listened to.
The report concludes with four recommendations for community based maternity care and six for hospital based care.
The report contains a response from the provider.