Communication skills and women's satisfaction with maternity care

• Register: ISRCTN
• Last refreshed on: 11 January 2021
• Main ID: ISRCTN80243969
• Date of registration: 31/07/2008
• Prospective Registration: No
• Primary sponsor: Faculty of Health Sciences/American University of Beirut (Lebanon)
• Public title: Communication skills and women's satisfaction with maternity care
• Scientific title: Effect of doctors' training in interpersonal and communication skills on women's satisfaction at labour and delivery: a stepped wedge cluster randomised trial in Damascus
• Date of first enrolment: 01/07/2008
• Target sample size: 2200
• Recruitment status: Completed
• URL: http://isrctn.com/ISRCTN80243969
• Study type: Interventional
• Study design: A stepped wedge randomised controlled design (Treatment)
• Phase: Not Applicable

Countries of recruitment

Syria

Contacts

• Name: Hyam Bashour

Key inclusion & exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria:
1. Care providers including mainly residents working in the public maternity hospitals in Damascus and its surroundings
2. Women as potential beneficiaries from our intervention would include all women (aged 15 - 49 years) using the hospitals under study. We will target in our measurements all women with living babies who agreed to participate in the study, whether the delivery was normal vaginal or by caesarean section. Women using those hospitals are largely from middle and low socio-economic class.

Exclusion criteria: All care providers and women who do not meet the inclusion criteria

Age minimum:
Age maximum:
Gender: Female

Health Condition(s) or Problem(s) studied

Women satisfaction with maternity care
Pregnancy and Childbirth
Labour and delivery

Intervention(s)

In the stepped wedged design which is known to be ethically sensitive all will be exposed to intervention by the end of the trial. The timing in which each hospital will receive the intervention (stepping) is randomised. The intervention is a training package which was designed by an international expert in communication skills with activities and role plays based on real example from the maternity wards that were collected from previous research. All residents in the study hospitals will be exposed to training, not necessary at a single point of time as the number of residents in some hospitals is very big to be trained at one time. The training will cover the following themes:
1. An overview of the doctor-patient communication
2. Questioning skills
3. Listening skills
4. Non-verbal communication
5. Answering skills
6. Rapport building skills
7. Counselling skills
8. Skills of persuasion

Effective teaching methods will be used as suggested by Maguire and Pitceathly (2002). The training is carried out by an Arab speaker for three days and 20 hours of training.

The measurement of outcomes will be carried out after the training in each hospital as well as 2 and 6 months afterwards. Rounds of observation will be done, where each round will include an observation in all rooms, for 3 days and for all shifts including day and night shifts. As for the women satisfaction questionnaire; this will be implemented as well in four points of times excluding the baseline. Nearly one hundred women will be recruited from each hospital. Also, future measurements at 2 and 6 months after the study are considered b

Primary Outcome(s)

Women's satisfaction with interpersonal relationships of doctors working in labour and delivery rooms.

The measurement of outcomes will be carried out after the training in each hospital as well as 2 and 6 months afterwards.

Secondary Outcome(s)

Change in communicative behaviour of the care providers (residents) serving in labour and delivery rooms.

The measurement of outcomes will be carried out after the training in each hospital as well as 2 and 6 months afterwards.

Secondary ID(s)

074986; 72

Source(s) of Monetary Support

The Wellcome Trust (UK) (grant ref: 074986) - funding provided to the Faculty of Health Sciences/American University of Beirut (Lebanon) for the programme on Choices and Challenges in Changing Childbirth

Ethics review

Status:
Approval date:
Contact:

Ethics approval received from the Institutional Review Board at Damascus University, Faculty of Medicine on the 28th March 2006 (ref: 671).

Results

• Results available: Yes
• Date Completed: 01/12/2009