Early labour care has been a problem for childbirth professionals and women over the past 20 years (Janssen et al., 2009). The majority of women are managed through telephone advice initially and then assessment either on labour wards or separate assessment centres (McNiven et al., 1998 and Hodnett et al., 2008). Both of these settings operate on the premise that hospital labour wards are not an appropriate place for women in early labour because research has shown that women have more labour interventions if admitted there (Bailit et al., 2005 and Rahnama et al., 2006). This probably happens because labour ward staff eventually recommend speeding up labour by undertaking artificial rupture of membranes and administering an oxytocin infusion. Accelerating labour in this way may be linked to organisational pressures, rather than clinical need as there is a widely held belief that a long latent phase of labour does not necessarily predict complications in later labour (El-Hamamy and Arulkumaran, 2005). Therefore, it follows that women should only be cared for on labour wards when they are in the active phase of the first stage of labour. This conclusion is endorsed by most midwives and obstetricians. However, there is an alternative body of research that has explored women's perceptions of their early labour care and tends to arrive at a different conclusion (Barnett et al., 2008, Eri et al., 2010 and Nyman et al., 2011).
This research demonstrates that many women need either on-going support during the latent phase of labour (Eri et al., 2010) or believe they are in active labour when the professionals say they are not (Gross et al., 2003). Maternity services are generally not well equipped to provide early labour support so either these women are asked to remain at home after receiving telephone advice or are sent home after an initial hospital assessment.
There is a small body of research which has specifically examined women's views of telephone communications in early labour (Nolan and Smith, 2010 and Green et al., 2012), concluding in the main that many were dissatisfied and had unmet needs for advice and support. Effective communication requires congruence between the needs and expectations of users and providers of maternity care and that cannot be achieved until midwives' perspectives are more clearly understood. As yet, prior research has not specifically addressed this aspect.
For midwives, telephone conversations take place in the context of a busy clinical area, where the needs of women telephoning the maternity unit have to be balanced with responsibilities for those already admitted (Webb, 2004). Because women who are admitted in early labour and stay on labour wards tend to have more labour interventions, one way of addressing this is by encouraging later admission in labour. Midwives play a key role as gate-keepers to the labour suite. Their decision-making has implications for women's choice of pain relief methods, psychosocial outcomes, clinical safety (including unattended births or babies born before arrival) and perceptions of service quality. Midwives who participated in focus groups about their experiences of the telephone component of the All Wales Pathway for Normal Labour and Birth questioned the appropriateness of telephone assessment (compared to face-to-face) and expressed concerns about potential complaints (Green et al., 2012).
It is clear that there is a need to explore specifically midwives' views of telephone conversations around early labour to inform maternity service re-design, midwifery education and practice.
The research aims are:
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To explore midwives' concerns, experiences and perceptions of the purpose of telephone contacts with women in early labour.
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To explore the characteristics of satisfactory and unsatisfactory telephone conversations with women in early labour from the midwives' perspective.