Midwives' Experiences of Providing the “Inspirational Lecture” as a Care Intervention for Expectant Parents—A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Background: In most Western countries, ordinary parental classes exist and have become a well-established form of professional support within midwifery care, even though some of these classes lack evidence of benefits for the parents. A Swedish randomized controlled trial including an intervention as a pilot study, revealed that a type of parental preparatory professional support provided for expectant parents, the "inspirational lecture," showed a tendency to be beneficial for parents' birth experience, and their perceived quality of parental couple relationship. However, there is no previous research on the midwives' experiences from providing the inspirational lecture. Carrying out research on midwives' experiences from providing the lecture, could bring future opportunities to provide a work-integrated learning (WIL) related to professionals' skills, and the pedagogic used. Aim: To elucidate midwives' experiences about providing the inspirational lecture as a care intervention for expectant parents. Methods: Midwives were interviewed and data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The midwives strived to put childbirth into a comprehensive and manageable context for the expectant parents, during the inspirational lecture. For this, different approaches were used to make expectant parents understand how the parents themselves can be engaged participants in their own birth. Conclusion and Clinical Implications: The midwives used the inspirational lecture to provide the expectant parents with knowledge about how they, as a parental couple, could cooperate and feel safe in relation to the upcoming birth. This could be understood as if the midwives were striving to facilitate the integrative power of the parental couple, which is the couples' ability to gather their joint power. These results can assist midwives and serve as a reference for providing parental classes for expectant parents with a focus on promoting both the parents' individual as well as mutual skills.

role of midwives in the application of classroom services for pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic period

“…The role of midwives in implementing classes for pregnant women is to provide materials about pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and newborn care class activities for pregnant women (Arrish et al, 2014;Jones et al, 2012). The midwife also acts as a motivator to motivate pregnant women and their husbands to attend the class of the pregnant woman's husband at least one meeting during the pregnancy (Arrish et al, 2017;Bäckström et al, 2020). The role of the motivator is to raise awareness and encourage expectant women to recognize problems or sicknesses that occur during pregnancy.…”

Professionals' experiences of supporting two‐mother families in antenatal and child health care in Sweden

“…Health care professionals exhibited cultural sensitivity when asking open‐ended questions and using the term “partner” to avoid cultural stereotyping. This term is used by midwives with the intention of treating partners equally regardless of gender [28]. Halldorsdottir [21, 29] describes caring as a mode of being and creating a connection with the patient.…”

Parental‐couple separation during the transition to parenthood

“…This study forms part of a larger research project, “The Study of Parental Support,” a longitudinal cohort study of 918 parents consisting of qualitative and quantitative research focusing on parental support (Bäckström et al., 2018 , 2020 ; Bäckström, Larsson, et al., 2017 ; Bäckström et al., 2016 ; Bäckström, Thorstensson, et al., 2017 ). The larger research project's overall aim is to evaluate first‐time mothers' and partners' perceptions of professional parental support during childbearing.…”

“…The IL aims to support future parents preparing mentally for their child's birth by using humour. The informative support in IL is brought about by different pedagogical aspects such as drama and role‐playing (Bäckström et al., 2020 ).…”