We would like to invite women, birthing people and their families who have experienced a breech pregnancy at term to attend an online focus group discussion on Wednesday 19th January 2022, 12:00-13:00 to be conducted via Microsoft Teams. Anyone with an interest and experience of breech pregnancy can participate.
The purpose of this meeting will be to get your perspective on the work we have been doing so far.
We have been working on analysing data from qualitative interviews held with OptiBreech 1 participants. To date, we have interviewed 15 women purposefully sampled to reflect various OptiBreech sites, mode of births, and outcomes. Our main objective was to understand what makes the OptiBreech intervention acceptable (or not) to women.
The key themes that we have found are:
- Access to skilled breech care: Vaginal breech birth as a viable and safe option is still unknown to many, and lack of specialists reduced equity of access. Women who were referred to a specialist at one of the OptiBreech sites or were already receiving care at a study site found it easy to access and participate in their care. Women who had to transfer care from another hospital or find an OptiBreech site themselves had a difficult time doing so, often requiring increased effort, multiple trips, time off work etc.
- Balanced information: Women really appreciated being provided balanced information on the safety and risks of vaginal breech birth vs. caesarean section including possible complications and how to manage them. This enabled them to make autonomous informed decisions and increased self-efficacy and confidence, not only in themselves but also in the breech specialist midwife. Conversely, when women had to do this research themselves because they were not getting cohesive information from the healthcare professionals, this was seen as a burden and sometimes women were made to feel pressure to choose caesarean section as the ‘safe’ choice.
- Shared responsibility: Women often felt emotional burden including feelings of stress, judgement, and guilt because of the choices they had made to have a vaginal breech birth, both from family and friends, as well as other healthcare professionals. Speaking with and being cared for by the OptiBreech specialist midwife helped ease this emotional burden and gave the women confidence in their choices.
- Team dynamics: We found that women had placed an enormous amount of trust and confidence in the breech specialist midwife which extended to the rest of the team, attributed to previous experience, skills and knowledge. Although women did not know all the members of the team, the trust and confidence was extended to them because of shared responsibility and training requirements needed by all OptiBreech team members.
We need your input on our findings and invite your opinions on whether these findings are relevant to you, if we have interpreted them correctly, or if we have missed any important factors in what makes OptiBreech an acceptable intervention. At the meeting we will present a short summary of our findings so far, and then have an open discussion to hear any thoughts, opinions, or questions you may have.
The meeting will be held on Wednesday 19th January 2022, 12:00-13:00 via Microsoft Teams.
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The OptiBreech Project 