Maternity Support Survey

[chwcbesteph, RN]

I just took this survey as a doula and thought I would share it here with all of you fabulous L&D nurses :)

It's being put on by several nursing and sociology students and supported by the University of Arizona to study the perceptions and practices of support personnel of pregnancy and birth- nurses, doulas, and childbirth educators. Let's help these ladies out!

http://www.maternitysupportsurvey.com/Maternity_Care_Survey/HOME.html

From the site:

"While there are a variety of views of contemporary North American maternity care outcomes, research has shown that support during labor and delivery has a significant impact on method of delivery, maternal and neonatal morbidity, and rates of postpartum depression. Yet existing research in maternity care has tended to explore how mothers and families view their care, with less attention to the views of individuals who provide support to women during pregnancy and birth. Similarly, research on maternity clinicians has largely focused on midwives and to a lesser extent, obstetricians but there has been no systematic research focused on non-provider roles in maternity care: nurses, childbirth educators and doulas.

The Maternity Support Survey is the first study to explore three different, but related, careers in terms of their approach to maternal support and care. This comprehensive research will survey doulas, childbirth educators, and labor and delivery nurses from across the United States and Canada about their knowledge and attitudes toward current childbirth practices, technologies and support. Topics that the survey will investigate include: whether doulas and childbirth educators view their maternity support work as a career, how doulas and childbirth educators establish their expertise, how technology affects workload among labor and delivery nurses, how maternity support workers are affected by managed care and litigation concerns, and emotional burnout among maternity support workers."