Journal of Women's Health Care
Open Access
ISSN: 2167-0420
ISSN: 2167-0420
Johanna Mathibe Neke and K G Makobe
University of South Africa, South Africa
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Women's Health Care
The aim of the antenatal psychosocial care project (2017-2019) is to raise the midwives� awareness of psychosocial care, to improve the quality of psychosocial services and to fill the gap that exists between routine physical antenatal care and psychosocial care. The proposed project is a follow up on a pilot study that was conducted as part of a PhD degree. A mixed method approach was applied to explore psychosocial risk assessment during antenatal care. The findings from the pilot study were important in that they too, suggest that pregnant women experience psychosocial problems. The implication of the findings appeared to be that midwives are willing to incorporate the psychosocial assessment tool into routine antenatal care; however challenges including the midwifery curriculum hinder the process. The outcome of the midwifery curriculum review and the perceptions and experiences of midwifery lecturers will be discussed. A long term objective of the project is the incorporation of the psychosocial risk assessment tool as part of routine antenatal care. While the use of this antenatal psychosocial assessment tool may increase the midwives� awareness of psychosocial risks and form a basis for further studies, a bigger sample size validation of the tool and statistical power are required to provide evidence that routine antenatal psychosocial assessment would also lead to improved outcomes for mother and/or child, which will also be addressed in this project. mathijm@unisa.ac.za