What Matters to Women during Childbirth: A systematic qualitative review

Optimum outcomes for pregnant women and their babies depend on acceptable, affordable, accessible, high quality provision of maternity care during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period. However, the overuse of interventions in some contexts, and the underuse in others, along with growing evidence of disrespectful and abusive behaviors in some institutional settings demonstrates that many maternity services are not meeting these standards. Good quality intrapartum care is vital, both for women and babies who are healthy, and for the minority who experience complications.

To achieve an optimum standard of care, maternity care should reflect what is important to childbearing women. This review was undertaken to inform the World Health Organization’s intrapartum guidelines.

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