Respectful Maternity Care: A Field Aspiration

Publish Date: March 2015
Author: MCHIP, MCSP
Language: English

MCHIP conducted a survey in 2012 with the objective of collecting information from key stakeholders about their experiences implementing interventions to promote respectful maternity care (RMC). A convenience sample of 48 individuals from 19 countries responded to the survey about disrespectful care and abuse in maternity care, approaches for prevention, and ways to promote RMC.

The survey report summarizes the experiences of selected countries, including programs, interventions, results, challenges, and recommendations. The survey report identified key areas of disrespect and abuse and associated factors related to policy; infrastructure and resources; health care management; ethics and culture; and knowledge, skills, attitudes, and standards of practice in facilities and communities.

In addition, the survey report indicated a number of RMC strategies and interventions that were then grouped into the categories of advocacy, legal approaches, interventions focused on the health facility (management, infrastructure, clinical practices, and interpersonal communications), educational and training programs, community, research, and monitoring and evaluation. Finally the survey report described challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations provided by the key informants, synthesizing and presenting them under the categories of legal framework and governance, resources, management, knowledge/skills/attitudes, community, and advocacy/communication.

The survey concluded that despite the challenges and the complexity of implementing RMC, there is interest in promoting RMC in many countries, various interventions have been implemented to address the issue, a variety of tools are available, and some consistent results have been produced.