UNDERSTAND
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Unexpected news in pregnancy: a co-design study between service users and healthcare professionals to improve communication and decision-making in women with mental health conditions (UNDERSTAND).
IRAS ID
310337
Contact name
Elena Greco
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Barts Health NHS trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 2 months, 31 days
Research summary
When pregnant women receive news that their unborn baby is not developing as expected, this news can often be difficult and distressing for them to hear, and challenging for doctors to communicate. Occasionally women may face the decision whether or not they continue the pregnancy.
For women with mental health problems, this already sensitive situation is more challenging. To date, no research has looked at the question of how best to communicate difficult news to these more vulnerable women.
Our research will draw upon the experience of people that have been in this situation, including women/partners and staff, to help us improve our services. We plan to do this as follows:
We will film consultations of communicating unexpected news during pregnancy in our units, with both parties’ consent. We will look at how healthcare professionals conduct the consultation (words they choose, etc) and how patients react to the news (questions they ask, etc).
We will interview women with mental health conditions (and/or their significant others) who received unexpected news during their pregnancy. We want to learn about their experience and ask them for suggestions to improve care. Separately, we will interview staff to learn from their experiences, understand challenges and gather recommendations.
Finally, we will invite women and healthcare professionals to a joint workshop to share the findings from filmed consultations/interviews. We will ask them to work together to agree on areas of improvement and co-produce recommendations for improving communication.
The idea for this project came from members of the East London women’s health patient and public advisory group “Katie’s Team” and this research will be co-produced together with members of this team. The recommendations will be the basis for developing guidance for healthcare staff on communication, and for further research to put this into practice.REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
23/IEC08/0010
Date of REC Opinion
6 Apr 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion