Document Type
Master's Culminating Experience
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
Background: Prenatal care (PNC) within the first trimester is associated with improved fetal and maternal health outcomes. Improved PNC is necessary to prevent negative birth outcomes such as low birth weight and infant mortality, which have significant impact on birth outcome rates. Improving access to PNC in the first trimester involves removing barriers to care. A brief survey distributed to expectant mothers is a simple way to define these barriers. Many small community health centers do not use surveys to gather patient information. By reaching this population, barriers to PNC can be better understood and mitigated using community resources decreasing infant mortality rates, low birth weight figures, and other preventable causes of negative birth outcomes.
Objective: Evaluate existing PNC surveys and provide recommendations for a future survey to identify barriers to PNC for smaller communities, such as Clark County, Ohio.
Methods: A literature review was conducted to search for existing prenatal care surveys using search terms surrounding socio-demographic factors, maternal barriers, and structural barriers to PNC. Surveys were evaluated on five criteria: socio-demographic variables, length, quantitative measures, languages offered, and distribution methods.
Results: Sixteen surveys were identified, none met all five criteria. After analysis model surveys include the Prenatal Care Coordination Pregnancy Questionnaire, the Kaiser Permanente Prenatal Questionnaire, and the PNC Satisfaction and Resilience Survey- Maricopa County.
Conclusions: Combining tactics utilized by surveys that met at least four of the five criteria can produce a valid and useful survey to gather information to improve maternal and fetal health outcomes.
Repository Citation
Akamune, J. (2018). Determining the Barriers to Prenatal Care Entry within the First Trimester by Evaluation of Prenatal Care Surveys and Questionnaires. Wright State University. Dayton, Ohio.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
