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Bearing Witness: U.S. and Canadian Maternity Support Workers’ Observations of Mistreatment of Women in Childbirth

Sat, August 12, 8:30 to 10:10am, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 510D

Abstract

Recent reports have shed light on the mistreatment of women during childbirth by maternity clinicians, suggesting a real problem of mistreatment in maternity care. What is unknown, however, is how frequently mistreatment occurs in facility-based childbirth. This research uses data on doulas and L&D nurses in the United States and Canada from the Maternity Support Survey (MSS) to examine the frequency with which they witnessed mistreatment in labor and birth, including verbal abuse, discrimination, and violations of informed consent. The MSS data reveal that maternity support workers (MSWs) sometimes witness mistreatment at alarming rates. We also analyzed the relationship between MSWs’ characteristics and the frequency with which they identified several types of obstetric mistreatment. In multivariate analyses, we found that MSWs of color report seeing racial-ethnic mistreatment more often than white MSWs. We also found effects of marital and parental status and, for nurses, of working in a hospital with Baby-Friendly status. These findings can help to redress mistreatment during childbirth by providing important information about its frequency and the characteristics that influence its identification.

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