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Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey

BACKGROUND: In Australia, maternity care services provide care for pregnant and postpartum women and their newborns. The COVID-19 pandemic forced these services to quickly adapt and develop policies and procedures for dealing with transmission in health care facilities, as well as work under public...

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Autores principales: Tan, Annie, Wilson, Alyce N., Bucknall, Tracey, Digby, Robin, Vogel, Joshua P., Homer, Caroline SE.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10123468/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37095441
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-023-05614-5
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author Tan, Annie
Wilson, Alyce N.
Bucknall, Tracey
Digby, Robin
Vogel, Joshua P.
Homer, Caroline SE.
author_facet Tan, Annie
Wilson, Alyce N.
Bucknall, Tracey
Digby, Robin
Vogel, Joshua P.
Homer, Caroline SE.
author_sort Tan, Annie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In Australia, maternity care services provide care for pregnant and postpartum women and their newborns. The COVID-19 pandemic forced these services to quickly adapt and develop policies and procedures for dealing with transmission in health care facilities, as well as work under public health measures to counter its spread within the community. Despite well-documented responses and adaptations by healthcare systems, no studies have examined the experiences of maternity service leaders through the pandemic. This study aimed to explore the experiences of maternity service leaders, to understand their perspectives on what happened in health services and what was required of a leader during the COVID-19 pandemic in one Australian state. METHODS: A longitudinal qualitative study collected data from 11 maternity care leaders during the pandemic in the state of Victoria. Leaders participated in a series of interviews over the 16-month study period, with a total of 57 interviews conducted. An inductive approach to developing codes allowed for semantic coding of the data, then a thematic analysis was conducted to explore patterned meaning across the dataset. RESULTS: One overarching theme, ‘challenges of being a maternity service leader during the pandemic’, encompassed participant’s experiences. Four sub-themes described the experiences of these leaders: (1) needing to be a rapid decision-maker, (2) needing to adapt and alter services, (3) needing to filter and translate information, and (4) the need to support people. At the beginning of the pandemic, the challenges were most acute with slow guideline development, rapid communications from the government and an urgent need to keep patients and staff safe. Over time, with knowledge and experience, leaders were able to quickly adjust and respond to policy change. CONCLUSION: Maternity service leaders played an important role in preparing and adapting services in accordance with government directives and guidelines while also developing strategies tailored to their own health service requirements. These experiences will be invaluable in designing high quality and responsive systems for maternity care in future crises. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-023-05614-5.
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spelling pubmed-101234682023-04-25 Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey Tan, Annie Wilson, Alyce N. Bucknall, Tracey Digby, Robin Vogel, Joshua P. Homer, Caroline SE. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth Research BACKGROUND: In Australia, maternity care services provide care for pregnant and postpartum women and their newborns. The COVID-19 pandemic forced these services to quickly adapt and develop policies and procedures for dealing with transmission in health care facilities, as well as work under public health measures to counter its spread within the community. Despite well-documented responses and adaptations by healthcare systems, no studies have examined the experiences of maternity service leaders through the pandemic. This study aimed to explore the experiences of maternity service leaders, to understand their perspectives on what happened in health services and what was required of a leader during the COVID-19 pandemic in one Australian state. METHODS: A longitudinal qualitative study collected data from 11 maternity care leaders during the pandemic in the state of Victoria. Leaders participated in a series of interviews over the 16-month study period, with a total of 57 interviews conducted. An inductive approach to developing codes allowed for semantic coding of the data, then a thematic analysis was conducted to explore patterned meaning across the dataset. RESULTS: One overarching theme, ‘challenges of being a maternity service leader during the pandemic’, encompassed participant’s experiences. Four sub-themes described the experiences of these leaders: (1) needing to be a rapid decision-maker, (2) needing to adapt and alter services, (3) needing to filter and translate information, and (4) the need to support people. At the beginning of the pandemic, the challenges were most acute with slow guideline development, rapid communications from the government and an urgent need to keep patients and staff safe. Over time, with knowledge and experience, leaders were able to quickly adjust and respond to policy change. CONCLUSION: Maternity service leaders played an important role in preparing and adapting services in accordance with government directives and guidelines while also developing strategies tailored to their own health service requirements. These experiences will be invaluable in designing high quality and responsive systems for maternity care in future crises. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-023-05614-5. BioMed Central 2023-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC10123468/ /pubmed/37095441 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-023-05614-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Tan, Annie
Wilson, Alyce N.
Bucknall, Tracey
Digby, Robin
Vogel, Joshua P.
Homer, Caroline SE.
Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey
title Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey
title_full Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey
title_fullStr Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey
title_full_unstemmed Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey
title_short Challenges of being a maternity service leader during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey
title_sort challenges of being a maternity service leader during the covid-19 pandemic: a descriptive analysis of the journey
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10123468/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37095441
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-023-05614-5
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