ORIGINAL ARTICLE  NEW INSIGHTS INTO MATERNITY CARE DESIGN AND DELIVERY 

Minerva Ginecologica 2018 December;70(6):663-75

DOI: 10.23736/S0026-4784.18.04296-X

Copyright © 2018 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Findings from the Italian Babies Born Better Survey

Elena SKOKO ¹ ✉, Claudia RAVALDI ², Alfredo VANNACCI ^{2, 3}, Antonella NESPOLI ⁴, Naseerah AKOOJI ⁵, Marie-Clare BALAAM ⁶, Alessandra BATTISTI ¹, Michela CERICCO ⁷, Laura IANNUZZI ⁸, Sandra MORANO ⁹, Soo DOWNE ⁶

¹ Human Rights in Maternity and Childbirth Research Unit, Multimedia Lab for Comparative Law, Department of Political Sciences, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy; ² CiaoLapo Onlus, Charity for Healthy Pregnancy and Perinatal Loss Support, Prato, Italy; ³ Department of Neurosciences, Psychology, Drug Research and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy; ⁴ Department of Medicine and Surgery, School of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy; ⁵ Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK; ⁶ Research in Childbirth and Health Unit (ReaCH), School of Community Health and Midwifery, Unversity of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK; ⁷ La Goccia Magica, Charity for Peer-to-Peer Breastfeeding Support, Rome, Italy; ⁸ Department of Health Care Professions, Careggi University Hospital, Florence, Italy; ⁹ Department of Neurology, Ophthalmology, Gynecology and Maternal Infant, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

BACKGROUND: The most recent WHO recommendations “Intrapartum care for a positive childbirth experience” highlight the need to identify women-centered interventions and outcomes for intrapartum care, and to include service users’ experiences and qualitative research into the assessment of maternity care. Babies Born Better (B3) is a trans-European survey designed to capture service user views and experiences of maternity care provision. Italian service users contributed to the survey.
METHODS: The B3 Survey is an anonymous, mixed-method online survey, translated into 22 languages. We separated out the Italian responses and analyzed them using computer-assisted qualitative software (MAXQDA) and SPSS and STATA for quantitative data analysis. Simple descriptives were used for the numeric data, and content analysis for the qualitative responses. Geomapping was based on the coded qualitative data and postcodes (using Tableau Public).
RESULTS: There were 1000 respondents from every region of Italy, using a range of places of birth (hospital, birth center, home) and experiencing care with both midwives and obstetricians. Most identified positive experiences of care, as well as some practices they would like to change. Both positive and critical comments included provision of care based on the type of providers, clinical procedures, the birth environment, and breastfeeding support. There were clear differences in the geomapped data across Italian regions.
CONCLUSIONS: Mothers highly value respectful, skilled and loving care that gives them a strong sense of personal achievement and confidence, and birth environments that support this. There was distinct variation in the percentage of positive comments made across Italian regions.

KEY WORDS: Midwifery - Qualitative research - Italy - Delivery, obstetric - Breast feeding