A qualitative interview study exploring pregnant women’s and health professionals’ attitudes to external cephalic version

BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Catherine Exley²  Stephen Robson¹  Richard Thomson²  Rebecca Say² 

[1] Institute of Cellular Medicine, 4th Floor, William Leech Building, Medical School, Framlington Place, Newcastle University, NE2 4HH, UK;Institute of Health and Society, Baddiley - Clark Building, Richardson Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4AX, UK

关键词: Shared decision making;    Attitudes;    Mode of delivery;    External cephalic version;    Breech presentation;    Pregnancy;   

Others  :  1151311
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2393-13-4

 received in 2012-06-28, accepted in 2012-12-15,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

Women who have a breech presentation at term have to decide whether to attempt external cephalic version (ECV) and how they want to give birth if the baby remains breech, either by planned caesarean section (CS) or vaginal breech birth. The aim of this study was to explore the attitudes of women with a breech presentation and health professionals who manage breech presentation to ECV.

Methods

We carried out semi-structured interviews with pregnant women with a breech presentation (n=11) and health professionals who manage breech presentation (n=11) recruited from two hospitals in North East England. We used purposive sampling to include women who chose ECV and women who chose planned CS. We analysed data using thematic analysis, comparing between individuals and seeking out disconfirming cases.

Results

Four main themes emerged from the data collected during interviews with pregnant women with a breech presentation: ECV as a means of enabling natural birth; concerns about ECV; lay and professional accounts of ECV; and breech presentation as a means of choosing planned CS. Some women’s attitudes to ECV were affected by their preferences for how to give birth. Other women chose CS because ECV was not acceptable to them. Two main themes emerged from the interview data about health professionals’ attitudes towards ECV: directive counselling and attitudes towards lay beliefs about ECV and breech presentation.

Conclusions

Women had a range of attitudes to ECV informed by their preferences for how to give birth; the acceptability of ECV to them; and lay accounts of ECV, which were frequently negative. Most professionals described having a preference for ECV and reported directively counselling women to choose it. Some professionals were dismissive of lay beliefs about ECV. Some key challenges for shared decision making about breech presentation were identified: health professionals counselling women directively about ECV and the differences between evidence-based information about ECV and lay beliefs. To address these challenges a number of approaches will be required.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Say et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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