Written birth remains a contentious issue within the healthcare sector and specifically in maternal settings. Women regard written birth plans as a practical way to define the expectations and desires with their health care providers as well as a channel to help them communicate optimally with their healthcare providers. To the women or the patient group, the birth plan is a framework that helps the individual live and act within the best available resources that support effective and safe labor as well as post-labor wellness and health. For healthcare providers in maternal care, the birth plans are regarded and perceived as inconvenient elements which pose more problems than benefits in the prenatal and postnatal care.
One of the major issues of contention for the healthcare providers is that the birth plans create a sense of unrealistic expectations for women. Physicians and nurses have indeed argued that birth plans are the major causes or influences for occurrence of cesarean births. However, in reality, birth plans depict a proper channel in which women can be informed as well as empowered and subsequently leading to birth experience satisfaction. These differences in perceptions by the patient group and the nurses or physicians has a negative impact on the ultimate importance of the birth plans even within the knowledge that actually these birth plans have a significant correlation with better outcomes at prenatal, postnatal and at birth. The quality improvement competency insists on the need for nurses and care providers to utilize data in order to monitor outcomes and develop strategies to cover for any misses in processes and procedures (Farahat, El Sayed, Elkader & El-Nemer, 2015).
In this regard, nurses have to be empowered to access relevant information in regard to the importance of birth plans; in this case, evidence from research should be used to help change the perceptions of nurses so that they align with patient expectations. It is important that nurses are included in actual research as participants as well as researchers to help determine the importance of birth plans. Further, the need to develop forums that bring in patients and nurses in maternal care settings would provide the nurses with a platform where they can engage with the patients beyond the clinical setting and learn how to work collaboratively rather than in contention while in fact they are working towards a common goal (Farahat, El Sayed, Elkader & El-Nemer, 2015).
References
Farahat, A. H., El Sayed, H., Elkader, S. A., & El-Nemer, A. (2015). Effect of Implementing A Birth Plan on Womens' Childbirth Experiences and Maternal & Neonatal Outcomes. Journal of Education and Practice, 6(6), 27-31. Retrieved from www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/JEP/article/download/20039/20397
White-Corey, S. (2013). Birth plans: tickets to the OR?. MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 38(5), 268-273. Doi: 10.1097/NMC.0b013e31829a399d
