The Birth Place Choices Project: Phase one

Abstract

The Birth Place Choices (BPC) Project was carried out between May 2003 and May 2005 as a collaboration between Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. The BPC Project had three aims: 1. To identify factors that influence women's decisions about where to give birth 2. To determine whether the introduction of specially designed information and educational initiatives increase women's knowledge of choices for place of birth 3. To determine whether implementation of these initiatives was associated with an increase in the number of women choosing to give birth outside main consultant-led maternity units. Phase one of the BPC Project, described here, addressed the first aim. This is the first of three articles describing the work of the BPC Project. Following a literature review and an analysis of locally collected routine statistics relating to birthplace, a cross-sectional survey of local women and focus groups involving local women and midwives were carried out. The findings revealed that, compared to other health professionals, midwives had the greatest influence on maternity service users with regard to their birth place choices, yet were perhaps not using their influence effectively to ensure local women were aware of all their birthplace options, including midwifery-led units and home birth.

An exploration of influences on women’s birthplace decision-making in New Zealand: a mixed methods prospective cohort within the Evaluating Maternity Units study

“…The influence of the ‘medical or technocratic model’ is evident in the reasons and rationale given by TMH women in the survey and focus groups, in common with previous research [9,16]. They were committed to giving birth there regardless of any other factors- they wanted to be where the specialist services and facilities were ‘just in case’ they were needed, however unlikely this was.…”

Choosing a Model of Maternity Care: Decision Support Needs of Australian Women

“…Studies from Australia and elsewhere have shown that the information women receive about models of maternity care is often insufficient . Our own research found that only 7.7 percent of 5,058 women surveyed were told about all available models of care by a provider in early pregnancy .…”

What influences birth place preferences, choices and decision-making amongst healthy women with straightforward pregnancies in the UK? A qualitative evidence synthesis using a ‘best fit’ framework approach

“…This perception was related to HCP responses to their requests for information or advice about home birth [8, 31, 32, 41, 43, 44] or FMU birth in some cases [8, 34]. Midwives were described as providing little information or not offering home birth [8, 9, 31, 32, 37, 38, 44] or AMU birth [29, 31, 45] or ‘blocking’ discussions by use of body language or conversation closure [8, 9, 28, 31, 32, 37, 38, 40, 43, 44, 48].…”