gms | German Medical Science

Background: German women’s access to midwifery services, the kind of services they use and how they rate midwifery care is unknown. As part of the three year taking study HebAB.NRW – Midwifery Care in North Rhine-Westphalia the subproject mothers’ survey ought to answer these questions. Thus the study takes note of the recommendation written down in the round table for maternity care 2015’s final report, which requests a parallel survey of women and midwives to examine the supply of care in NRW to provide data basis for possible actions designed to improve the supply situation [1].

Aim/Question: From the mothers’ perspective, the subproject A mothers’ survey evaluates the supply with both clinical and non-clinical midwifery services in pregnancy, birth and antenatal care. The study design, the instrument, results of the pretest and quality management are described.

Methods: In a retrospective cohort study approximately 10,000 young mothers will be addressed shortly after giving birth in one of the randomly chosen clinics or in a birth centre. In order to reach as many young mothers as possible, the questionnaire will be available both online and by paper based and in German, as well as in Turkish, English and French. The survey will collect data about aspects like requirements, access, utilization, satisfaction with midwifery care, but also the use of information technology devices and women’s subjective health status. At the same time currently perceived supply problems as well as already existing research will be taken into account [2], [3]. Analysis will be both descriptive and analytical, for example regarding differences between supply with care in urban and rural areas or the subjective health status. For that, SPSS^© (Version 24) and R 3.3.2^© will be used.

Results: In addition to the results of the pretest, challenges will be described, just as the clinics’ recruitment in times of closing and overloaded obstetric departments. As a result an individually arranged recruitment strategy for every clinic turned out to be most effective.

Relevance: Because of its geographical features and high birth rates the state North Rhine-Westphalia offers the possibility to collect representative data for Germany as a whole. In addition, HebAB.NRW can serve other states as a model by design, organisation and survey instrument.

Recommendations/conclusion: The results of the research project give a basis for discussions, which could lead to the initiation of health political actions to secure and improve maternal care provided by midwives.

Ethical criteria and conflict of interests: The research will be submitted to the Ethics Committee of the Hochschule für Gesundheit, University of Applied Sciences (hsg), in October 2017. The work was financed by third party funds from: The project is funded by the Landeszentrum Gesundheit NRW (grant number LZG TG 72 001/2016). There is no conflict of interest.

The PDF file of the poster submitted for the meeting is available in German as Attachment 1 [Attach. 1].