Clinical trial NCT01524419: Women's Involvement In Decision Making At Labor And Its Effect on Their Perceived Labor Process
Official title: Women's Involvement In Decision Making At Labor And Its Effect on Their Perceived Labor Process
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: UNKNOWN
Conditions: Mother (Person)
Keywords: spontaneous labor
term
surgical
mechanical
fetal or maternal complications
Lead sponsor: Hillel Yaffe Medical Center
Sponsor class: OTHER_GOV
First posted: 2012-02-02
Enrollment: 100
Sex: FEMALE
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: women after vaginal birth at term with no mechanical or surgical intervention and with no maternal or fetal complications

Brief summary: 1. Increased women's involvement in decision making at labor process correlates with a positive perception of the labor process.
2. Increased maternal satisfaction with midwifery and gynecological care at labor correlates with a more positive perception of the labor process.

Detailed description: The Interrelationship Between Women's Involvement In Decision Making In Labor And Their Perception Of The Labor Experience Labor is one of the most significant events in women's lives. The process and outcome of labor may have long term effects on the way women perceive the parenting role and their personal, emotional and physical capability. Each woman arrives to labor with a planned construct of beliefs, expectations and fantasies regarding the labor process and outcomes, which are driven from different cultural values and personal beliefs. The clinical reality does not always correlate with this emotional construct and with a woman's anticipated level of involvement in decision making at labor. Discrepancy between women's desired or expected labor processes and what happens in actuality may have a substantial impact on women's lives and on the way they will experience future births. The main goal of this research is to investigate the effects of labor process on women by examining the question whether women's involvement in decision making during labor has an effect on their perceived labor process.

The perceived labor process is a combination of a woman's level of engagement in decision making at labor, her perceived level of control in the labor process and the level of satisfaction from the obstetric caregivers (gynecologists and midwives). The participants of this research project shall be comprised of 100 women who were hospitalized during the two days immediately following labor and delivery in the maternity unit at Hillel Yaffe hospital, who gave birth in a normal delivery, at term (37 weeks of gestation) with no surgical or instrumental intervention and had no complications either to them or their babies. The participants will be given a self-replying questionnaire constructed especially for the purposes of this research project. The questionnaire is comprised of seven parts: (1) social-demographic information,(2) health background,(3) obstetric background,(4) the woman's perspective of labor process in general,(5) the woman's perspective of the progression of her actual labor,(6) the woman's evaluation of the attitude of obstetric caregivers (gynecologists and midwives) and (7) the level of control the woman had in decision making during labor and her perception of the labor experience. The research findings will be analyzed statistically using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) format. In addition to understanding the way women perceive their labor and delivery in terms of the level of involvement in decision making, these findings may also contribute to develop a therapeutic intervention tool to assist accommodating specific treatment to women in labor and childbirth according to the level of her desired involvement in decision making at birth, her viewpoint of therapeutic intervention and her expectations of the labor process.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Vaginal labor
* At term
* Hebrew/Arabic speakers

Exclusion Criteria:

* Mechanical or surgical intervention
* Maternal or fetal complications

Primary outcomes:
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Hadera
country: Israel
facility: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Hillel-Yaffe Medical Center
Study officials:
affiliation: Hillel Yaffe Medical Center
name: Merav Amos Chen, BA
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
affiliation: Hillel Yaffe Medical Center
name: Mordechai Hallak, prof
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
affiliation: Hillel Yaffe Medical Center
name: Elad Mei-Dan, dr
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
affiliation: University of Tel-Aviv
name: Mally ehrenfeld, prof
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
affiliation: University of Tel-Aviv
name: Tammy Schifter, dr
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
References: