Are maternity services improving? Or are they getting worse? These questions are hard to answer (and it’s probably not that simple!) without asking the people affected most. So researchers need to speak with the people experiencing the care.
Have you given birth in the last 3 years? If so, researchers from Oxford would love to hear from you about your experiences of maternity services. I’ll hand over to the research team to give you more info:
Why is the research being conducted?
The NHS needs a new questionnaire to evaluate women and birthing people’s experiences of maternity services. This is because the old ones are no longer suitable.
We need to make sure it includes relevant questions and is suitable for all the people who use maternity services. No matter who they are, their circumstances, or how positive or negative their experience.
To develop the new questionnaire, we need to speak to 30 – 40 women who have used NHS maternity services in the last three years. to help us understand their different views. We will talk about every aspect of the journey from early pregnancy through all the different stages of maternity and neonatal care as needed.
This is so that we can make sure the new questionnaire covers all aspects of everyone’s experience and can be used to measure maternity and neonatal services more appropriately.
Who is doing this research?
The team doing this work are from the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (University of London). We undertake research into people’s experiences of different health conditions and develop questionnaires based on evidence for patient experience measurement.
We are
For this project we need to hear women’s stories about their maternity care, both positive and negative. These stories will be used to capture what truly matters to women from all kinds of backgrounds who use maternity services. By participating, you could directly influence how maternity care experiences are measured so that they can be improved in the future.
What will participation involve?
- a 60-minute interview (by phone, video call or in-person)
- a chance to share your story
- shaping the future of maternity care
- a £20 voucher as a thank you
If you live in England and have used NHS maternity services in the last 3 years, your experience matters!
Interested? Please email us at teresa.finlay@phc.ox.ac.uk for more info.
We can make maternity care better together!
Thanks team!
If you’re a researcher looking to publicise your research projects and find participants or lay supervisors, Big Birthas is happy to help – check out this article for more information.