Informed Consent and Health Care during Pregnancy and Birth.

Our core objective is to understand better the relationship between informed consent in pregnancy and birth, and the experiences of women post partum. We aim to utilise this knowledge to investigate different models of autonomy, and to develop a tool to be utilised  during pregnancy and birth.

Our central question is as follows: What is the relationship between informed consent and women’s sense of empowerment through pregnancy and labour?

In order to answer it, we have four interrelated aims.

1.           To understand issues related to informed consent during pregnancy and birth as experienced by women and their health following childbirth;.

2.           To understand the lived experiences of midwives and obstetricians in gaining informed consent from women during their childbearing experiences.

3.           To develop a set of informed consent standards for pregnancy and birth given the philosophical dilemma of a woman giving consent for her unborn baby’s care. 

4.           To understand appropriate information giving for women during childbirth to enhance individual decision-making and care needs.

In particular we focus on these processes: 

1.Do people seeking pregnancy care understand informed consent, and the important choices that are available to them, as it relates their care?

2.Are health professionals given adequate time to explain and gain informed consent during pregnancy?

Our long-term outcomes include developing a documentation tool for health professionals (midwives and obstetricians) to use in the provision of women's labour and birth care. To ensure this is fit for purpose, our research will be iterative, as we will be explicitly seeking feedback from both sets of participants to understand what is needed. This tool will also collect data post birth about the experience from a 360-degree angle, involving all concerned. 

Our research will also form a robust evidence baseline. This data will then be used to investigate other groups of women, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, and trans women, as well as refugees. We believe the tool we will be of value in other resource poor settings as a model that can be adapted to other kids of health services. 

Our shorter-term objectives include the delivery of conference papers, and the publication of both refereed journal articles and a report for health professionals in this field. The overall aim of the project is to ensure that women are more empowered to give consent during pregnancy and birth.