Why do women assume a supine position when giving birth? The perceptions and experiences of postnatal mothers and nurse-midwives in Tanzania.

BACKGROUND: Before the advent of Western medicine in Tanzania, women gave birth in an upright position either by sitting, squatting or kneeling. Birthing women would hold ropes or trees as a way of gaining strength and stability in order to push the baby with sufficient force. Despite the evidence supporting the upright position as beneficial to the woman and her unborn child, healthcare facilities consistently promote the use of the supine position. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of mothers and nurse-midwives regarding the use of the supine position during labour and delivery. METHODS: We used a descriptive qualitative design. We conducted seven semi-structured interviews with nurse-midwives and two focus group discussions with postnatal mothers who were purposively recruited for the study. Qualitative content analysis guided the analysis. RESULTS: Four themes emerged from mothers' and midwives' description of their experiences and perceptions of using supine position during childbirth. These were: women adopted the supine position as instructed by midwives; women experience of using alternative birthing positions; midwives commonly decide birthing positions for labouring women and supine position is the best-known birthing position. CONCLUSION: Women use the supine position during childbirth because they are instructed to do so by the nurse-midwives. Nurse-midwives believe that the supine position is the universally known and practised birthing position, and prefer it because it provides flexibility for them to continuously monitor the progress of labour and assist delivery most efficiently. Mothers in this study had no other choice than to labour and deliver their babies in the supine position as instructed because they trusted midwives as skilled professionals who knew what was best given the condition of the mother and her baby.

Overview of literature on RMC and applications to Tanzania.

Respectful maternity care research in Tanzania continues to increase. This is an overview of the literature summarizing research based on the domains which comprise this quality of care indicator, ranging from exploratory and descriptive to quantitative measurements of birth perinatal outcomes when respectful interventions are made. The domains of respectful care are reflected in the seven Universal Rights of Childbearing Women but go further to implicate facility administrators and policy makers to provide supportive infrastructure to allay disrespect and abuse.The research methodologies continue to be problematic and several ethical cautions restrict how much control is possible. Similarly, the barriers to collecting accurate accounts in qualitative studies of disrespect require astute interviewing and observation techniques. The participatory community-based and the critical sociology and human rights frameworks appear to provide a good basis for both researcher and participants to identify problems and determine possible solutions to the multiple factors that contribute to disrespect and abuse. The work-life conditions of midwives in the Global South are plagued with poor infrastructure and significantly low resources which deters respectful care while decreasing retention of workers. Researchers and policy-makers have addressed disrespectful care by building human resource capacity, by strengthening professional organizations and by educating midwives in low-resource countries. Furthermore, researchers encourage midwives not only to acquire attitudinal change and to adopt respectful maternity care skills, but also to emerge as leaders and change agents.Safe methods for conducting care while addressing low resources, skilled management of conflict and creative innovations to engage the community are all interventions that are being considered for quality improvement research. Tanzania is poised to evaluate the outcomes of education workshops that address all seven domains of respectful care.