Are pregnant women satisfied with perinatal standards of care during COVID-19 pandemic?

  1. Claudia Ravaldi
  2. Laura Mosconi
  3. Giada Crescioli
  4. Valdo Ricca
  5. Alfredo Vannacci

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Abstract

COVID-19 restrictive measures severely impacted maternity services worldwide, but little is known about the differences in women’s concerns, perception of the modifications of maternity services and childbirth programs at different times during the pandemic. Here we report data from the first COVID-19 wave in Italy, during the 2020 national lockdown (March-April) and soon after lockdown release (May).

1307 pregnant women answered the survey during national lockdown (phase 1) or after restrictive measures were released (phase 2). Women reported a significantly higher COVID-19 concern during phase 1 than during phase 2 (2.34 SD 0.5 vs 2.12 SD 0.5 on a Likert scale 0-3; p<0.001). Several domains of perinatal care were affected during COVID-19 lockdown: while antenatal visits, the use of technology to keep in touch with healthcare professionals, and closeness of caregivers were generally more appreciated (especially during phase 2), women reported the greatest difficulties in receiving clear information on hospitalization, birth plan and partner’s presence at birth.

Italian pregnant women’s worries about the effects of the pandemic on health and their perception of quality in the organization of maternity services improved during lockdown, but they continued to represent a challenge in May, especially regarding organizational aspects of hospitalization and childbirth.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.19.20231670: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Human research ethical approval to conduct the survey was received from Florence University ethics committee (prot. n. 006897).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableBriefly, the nation-wide cross-sectional web-based survey COVID-ASSESS was conducted between March and May 2020 in a sample of Italian pregnant women, recruited with a snowball technique.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.19.20231670v1 on medRxiv