Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/22382
Appears in Collections:Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: Obesity and normal birth: A qualitative study of clinician’s management of obese pregnant women during labour
Author(s): Kerrigan, Angela
Kingdon, Carol
Cheyne, Helen
Contact Email: h.l.cheyne@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Obesity
Normal birth
Intrapartum care
Challenges
Health professionals
Issue Date: Oct-2015
Date Deposited: 29-Oct-2015
Citation: Kerrigan A, Kingdon C & Cheyne H (2015) Obesity and normal birth: A qualitative study of clinician’s management of obese pregnant women during labour. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 15 (1), Art. No.: 256. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-015-0673-2
Abstract: Background: Currently one-fifth of women in the UK are obese. Obese, pregnant woman are at an increased risk of experiencing complications of labour and serious morbidity. However, they are also more likely to undergo medical interventions such as induction of labour and caesarean section which in themselves confer additional health risks for obese women such as wound infection and deep vein thrombosis. Reducing unnecessary interventions and increasing normal birth rates for obese women would substantially improve their postnatal health and wellbeing and reduce the burden of NHS resources required to care for them post operatively. This research aimed to explore practitioners’ experiences of and strategies for providing intrapartum care to obese women.  Method: A qualitative methodology was adopted, focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with health professionals. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and data analysed using a framework approach.  Results: Twenty-four health professionals participated; Six Consultant Obstetricians two Consultant Anaesthetists and 16 midwives. Three key themes emerged from the data: medicalisation of obese birth; promotion of normal obese birth; and the complexities and contradictions in staff attitudes and behaviours. The overall interpretation is that positive approaches to obese birth offer opportunities to promote normal birth. However, many health professionals find the provision of intrapartum care to obese women challenging, and attitudes and behaviours towards the promotion of normal birth are heterogeneous, complex and contradictory.  Conclusion: The care of obese women during labour is generally medicalised and focussed on the associated risks. However, although there are conflicting views on how to care for obese women, some practitioners do strive to promote normality and optimise the potential for normal birth by challenging current practices and utilise some ‘interventions’ in order to facilitate normality and mobility during childbirth. Obesity is a major and growing health problem and a major cause of morbidity and mortality for pregnant women. It is essential that more positive proactive guidelines are available to maximise normal birth if the postnatal health of obese women is to be improved.
DOI Link: 10.1186/s12884-015-0673-2
Rights: © 2015 Kerrigan et al. Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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