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Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences

BACKGROUND: Raising awareness of the importance of fetal movements (FMs) and advising women on the appropriate action to take if they experience reduced FMs, is important for minimising or avoiding adverse perinatal outcomes. To gain insight and understanding of women’s perspectives of assessing FMs...

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Autores principales: Smith, Valerie, Muldoon, Kathryn, Brady, Vivienne, Delaney, Hannah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7944914/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33691666
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-021-03667-y
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author Smith, Valerie
Muldoon, Kathryn
Brady, Vivienne
Delaney, Hannah
author_facet Smith, Valerie
Muldoon, Kathryn
Brady, Vivienne
Delaney, Hannah
author_sort Smith, Valerie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Raising awareness of the importance of fetal movements (FMs) and advising women on the appropriate action to take if they experience reduced FMs, is important for minimising or avoiding adverse perinatal outcomes. To gain insight and understanding of women’s perspectives of assessing FMs in pregnancy, we conducted a qualitative evidence synthesis. METHODS: A qualitative evidence synthesis using thematic synthesis was conducted. Studies were eligible if they included pregnant women who were at least 20 weeks gestation and reported qualitative data from women on assessing FMs in pregnancy. MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycINFO and Social Science Citation Index, from inception to July 2020, were searched. The methodological quality of included studies was assessed by at least two reviewers using an Evidence for Policy and Practice Information (EPPI)-Centre quality assessment tool. Data synthesis, using the Thomas and Harden framework, involved line by line coding of extracted data, establishing descriptive themes, and determining analytical themes. Confidence in the findings was assessed using GRADE CER-Qual. RESULTS: Nine studies, involving 2193 women, were included in the review. The methodological quality of the studies was overall generally high. The synthesis revealed three dominant themes, and seven sub-themes that reflected women’s perspectives of assessing FMs in pregnancy. These were; 1) How women engage with FMs, with subthemes of informal engagement, formal engagement, and strategies to stimulate FMs; 2) ‘ … like a feather inside my belly’ - articulating and describing FMs, with sub-themes of sensations associated with FMs and timing and frequency of FMs; and 3) FMs and help/health seeking, with sub-themes of information sources and interacting with healthcare professionals. Confidence in the findings was either high or moderate, although two findings were rated low confidence and one very low. CONCLUSION: This qualitative evidence synthesis reveals that women informally engage with FMs during pregnancy. Women commonly adopt strategies to stimulate FMs when concerned. The use of the internet was a common source of obtaining information regarding FMs. Women require better support when contacting healthcare professionals about FMs. As only three of the nine included studies were exclusively qualitative in design, further qualitative studies exploring women’s perspective of assessing FMs in pregnancy are required. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-021-03667-y.
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spelling pubmed-79449142021-03-10 Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences Smith, Valerie Muldoon, Kathryn Brady, Vivienne Delaney, Hannah BMC Pregnancy Childbirth Research Article BACKGROUND: Raising awareness of the importance of fetal movements (FMs) and advising women on the appropriate action to take if they experience reduced FMs, is important for minimising or avoiding adverse perinatal outcomes. To gain insight and understanding of women’s perspectives of assessing FMs in pregnancy, we conducted a qualitative evidence synthesis. METHODS: A qualitative evidence synthesis using thematic synthesis was conducted. Studies were eligible if they included pregnant women who were at least 20 weeks gestation and reported qualitative data from women on assessing FMs in pregnancy. MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycINFO and Social Science Citation Index, from inception to July 2020, were searched. The methodological quality of included studies was assessed by at least two reviewers using an Evidence for Policy and Practice Information (EPPI)-Centre quality assessment tool. Data synthesis, using the Thomas and Harden framework, involved line by line coding of extracted data, establishing descriptive themes, and determining analytical themes. Confidence in the findings was assessed using GRADE CER-Qual. RESULTS: Nine studies, involving 2193 women, were included in the review. The methodological quality of the studies was overall generally high. The synthesis revealed three dominant themes, and seven sub-themes that reflected women’s perspectives of assessing FMs in pregnancy. These were; 1) How women engage with FMs, with subthemes of informal engagement, formal engagement, and strategies to stimulate FMs; 2) ‘ … like a feather inside my belly’ - articulating and describing FMs, with sub-themes of sensations associated with FMs and timing and frequency of FMs; and 3) FMs and help/health seeking, with sub-themes of information sources and interacting with healthcare professionals. Confidence in the findings was either high or moderate, although two findings were rated low confidence and one very low. CONCLUSION: This qualitative evidence synthesis reveals that women informally engage with FMs during pregnancy. Women commonly adopt strategies to stimulate FMs when concerned. The use of the internet was a common source of obtaining information regarding FMs. Women require better support when contacting healthcare professionals about FMs. As only three of the nine included studies were exclusively qualitative in design, further qualitative studies exploring women’s perspective of assessing FMs in pregnancy are required. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-021-03667-y. BioMed Central 2021-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7944914/ /pubmed/33691666 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-021-03667-y Text en © The Author(s) 2021 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/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://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 Article
Smith, Valerie
Muldoon, Kathryn
Brady, Vivienne
Delaney, Hannah
Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences
title Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences
title_full Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences
title_fullStr Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences
title_full_unstemmed Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences
title_short Assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: A qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences
title_sort assessing fetal movements in pregnancy: a qualitative evidence synthesis of women’s views, perspectives and experiences
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7944914/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33691666
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-021-03667-y
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