Author:

Keywords:

Smoking, Pregnancy, Midwives, Gynecologists

Abstract:

Background Smoking during pregnancy is associated with a number of health risks for mother and baby, such as stillbirth, low birth weight, preterm delivery, placenta pathology and SIDS. The preconceptional and prenatal period is considered as the ideal teaching moment for smoking cessation counseling, therefore women should be informed about benefits of smoking cessation programs. Purpose The national campaign in Belgium, in which counseling was partially reimbursed, had little success with pregnant women. Therefore we want to examine if gynecologists and midwives know the risks of smoking during pregnancy, what their attitudes are regarding smoking cessation and what they advise their clients. Method We used a qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews with gynecologists and midwives. We used content analysis to interpret the transcribed verbatim and to extract emergent themes and codes. In order to control subjectivity in analysis triangulation was used. Ethics approval was received from the Ethical Committee of the University Hospital of Ghent. Written informed consent was obtained prior to the interview and participants were assured of confidentiality. Results Preliminary results show that there are a number of factors lying on the base of failure of the national campaign: obscurity of whose task it is to provide smoking cessation information and lack of time, communication skills and knowledge about the content of the campaign. Conclusions and relevance Gynecologists and midwives should be trained in this matter.