Journal of Nursing & Care

Women's Experiences of Midwifery Support during Pregnancy A step in the Validation of the Scale: “The Mother Perceived Support from Professionals”

Abstract

Stina Thorstensson, Maria Nilsson, Linda Olsson, Elisabeth Hertfelt-Wahn, Anette Ekstrom

Background: Pregnancy can be physically and emotionally stressful for the parents, which means they need adequate professional support. Easy-to-use, validated scales are important in order to develop professional support in Antenatal care as well as in research. The aim: Our aim was to illuminate pregnant women’s experience of professional support at the Antenatal care, in relation to the Mother-Perceived-Professionals-Support (MoPPS) scale. Method: A qualitative study design using the method “Think aloud” with both inductive and deductive approaches, was used. Five first-time mothers were interviewed with open questions followed by questions related to the MoPPS scale items. Data was analyzed using inductive and deductive qualitative content analyses. Results: The inductive analysis resulted in one theme: “Professional support from midwives made women created a feeling of security and unique or rejected and lonely during pregnancy” and three categories: “Continuity and competence”, “Perceiving trust or not” and “Parental groups or individual visits”. The deductive analysis described the mothers’ understanding of each item. However, coherence between the inductive and deductive analyses varied and the MoPPS-scale needs development. Conclusion: The result shows that women's experience of professional support affects their sense of feeling safe or lonely during pregnancy. Important for midwives were to meet the women’s unique individual needs. The MoPPS scale was considered to be relevant and easy to understand, but it needs development to include questions about continuity, parental groups and the perception of midwives’ competence, which all were important for the women during their pregnancies. Clinical implications: To offer adequate professional support for women during pregnancy, midwives need to meet the women’s unique individual needs with both medical and supportive knowledge.