How midwives tailor health information used in antenatal care

Abstract

Objective: to examine the informal approaches taken by midwives and other antenatal staff to adapt health communication to the needs of their patients, as well as their perception of the barriers faced when trying to provide tailored health promotion.

Design: qualitative research methods (participant observation, individual and group interviews) were utilised to gain an understanding of how media and communication resources were used in practice within the study hospital.

Setting: a major metropolitan teaching hospital located in the Northern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia.

Participants: individual semi-structured interviews with antenatal staff (n=8) were combined with group interviews (n=2; total number of staff=13), and observational research.

Findings: midwives and other antenatal staff use a range of strategies to meet the perceived health literacy level of their patients. However, their attempts to tailor health information to individual needs are frequently based on incomplete information about patients' health literacy, may be inconsistent in delivery and content and are seldom assessed to determine whether communication has been understood or led to patient behaviour change.

Key conclusions: midwives fully recognise the need to adapt standard printed materials to meet the diverse health literacy needs of patients but lack the resources required to evaluate whether these adaptations have positive effect.

Implications for practice: midwives' commitment to improving health communication provides a latent resource that institutions can build on to improve health outcomes for patients with low health literacy. This requires improvements in health communication training, willingness to use a range of validated instruments for measuring health literacy, and commitment to use of innovative approaches to health promotion where these have been shown to have a positive impact on health behaviours.

Keywords: Antenatal care; Health communication; Health literacy; Health promotion; Pregnancy; Tailored health information.