Midwives' attitudes to counselling women about their smoking behaviour during pregnancy and postpartum

Abstract

Objective: to investigate the attitudes of midwives to counselling women about their smoking behaviour during pregnancy and postpartum.

Design: survey using postal questionnaires.

Setting: the entire federal state of Mecklenburg-West-Pomerania in Germany.

Participants: 189 midwives constituting 77% of all midwives working in that State.

Findings: midwives reported that they assessed smoking behaviour regularly (77%), addressed the consequences of smoking (70%) and advised women to quit. Among the midwives, 81% saw low chances of success and parents' expectations as the biggest barriers to counselling. Midwives reported that about 28% of women quit following their advice.

Key conclusions: smoking and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke are seen as prominent health threats that midwives reported they addressed routinely, including giving advice to stop smoking.

Implications for practice: midwives should be supported in learning effective intervention strategies to further strengthen their work. They are a target population to deliver brief smoking interventions.