↓ Skip to main content

Direct observation of respectful maternity care in five countries: a cross-sectional study of health facilities in East and Southern Africa

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, November 2015
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (80th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (78th percentile)

Mentioned by

policy
2 policy sources
twitter
1 X user

Citations

dimensions_citation
202 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
610 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Direct observation of respectful maternity care in five countries: a cross-sectional study of health facilities in East and Southern Africa
Published in
BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, November 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12884-015-0728-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Heather E. Rosen, Pamela F. Lynam, Catherine Carr, Veronica Reis, Jim Ricca, Eva S. Bazant, Linda A. Bartlett, on behalf of the Quality of Maternal and Newborn Care Study Group of the Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program

Abstract

Poor quality of care at health facilities is a barrier to pregnant women and their families accessing skilled care. Increasing evidence from low resource countries suggests care women receive during labor and childbirth is sometimes rude, disrespectful, abusive, and not responsive to their needs. However, little is known about how frequently women experience these behaviors. This study is one of the first to report prevalence of respectful maternity care and disrespectful and abusive behavior at facilities in multiple low resource countries. Structured, standardized clinical observation checklists were used to directly observe quality of care at facilities in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, and the United Republic of Tanzania. Respectful care was represented by 10 items describing actions the provider should take to ensure the client was informed and able to make choices about her care, and that her dignity and privacy were respected. For each country, percentage of women receiving these practices and delivery room privacy conditions were calculated. Clinical observers' open-ended comments were also analyzed to identify examples of disrespect and abuse. A total of 2164 labor and delivery observations were conducted at hospitals and health centers. Encouragingly, women overall were treated with dignity and in a supportive manner by providers, but many women experienced poor interactions with providers and were not well-informed about their care. Both physical and verbal abuse of women were observed during the study. The most frequently mentioned form of disrespect and abuse in the open-ended comments was abandonment and neglect. Efforts to increase use of facility-based maternity care in low income countries are unlikely to achieve desired gains if there is no improvement in quality of care provided, especially elements of respectful care. This analysis identified insufficient communication and information sharing by providers as well as delays in care and abandonment of laboring women as deficiencies in respectful care. Failure to adopt a patient-centered approach and a lack of health system resources are contributing structural factors. Further research is needed to understand these barriers and develop effective interventions to promote respectful care in this context.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 610 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Japan 1 <1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Colombia 1 <1%
Brazil 1 <1%
Unknown 606 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 145 24%
Student > Ph. D. Student 62 10%
Researcher 58 10%
Student > Bachelor 40 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 33 5%
Other 104 17%
Unknown 168 28%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 159 26%
Medicine and Dentistry 130 21%
Social Sciences 72 12%
Psychology 8 1%
Arts and Humanities 8 1%
Other 50 8%
Unknown 183 30%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 March 2021.
All research outputs
#4,386,687
of 23,692,259 outputs
Outputs from BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
#1,226
of 4,363 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#70,567
of 389,819 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
#19
of 83 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,692,259 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 80th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,363 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.0. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 389,819 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 83 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 78% of its contemporaries.