Abstract
Background: Heart disease, although relatively rare in pregnancy, is the leading cause of maternal death in the UK, with just over 2 deaths per 100,000 maternities reported. Most of these deaths occurred in women with undiagnosed heart disease. Health professionals need to be equipped with appropriate knowledge and skills to help identify women at possible risk and to manage appropriately or to refer for specialist assessment, care and management.Aim: To identify the nature, content and accessibility of educational resources available to health professionals caring for pregnant women with heart disease Methods: A scoping review was undertaken using Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) five stage methodological framework. Key search terms used were ‘pregnancy’, ‘education’, ‘training’, ‘heart disease’, ‘midwife’, ‘doctor’ with their related terms and appropriate Boolean operators, in seven databases, along with grey literature, organisational websites and an online web based search. The research question was: What is the nature, content and accessibility of education and training resources for health professionals caring for pregnant women with heart disease?Findings. A small number of papers discussed educational needs, without providing content evaluation of training or educational resources. A web based search for online availability of educational programmes revealed two resources which fitted the final inclusion criteria. Both resources revealed three overarching common themes in the context of health professional education in the care of pregnant women with heart disease: preconception care, cardiovascular adaptation to pregnancy and antenatal, intra natal,and postnatal management.Key conclusions and implications for practice: The evidence indicates limited discussion in the literature regarding training for health professionals and limited accessibility for online learning as part of continuing professional education. In view of this limitation and the small but growing cohort of pregnant women with heart disease, all professional staff caring for pregnant women should have access to ongoing education and training in order to maintain skills to manage appropriately or to make timely and appropriate referrals.Key words: Heart disease, online educational resources, health professionals, evidence-based midwifery
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 55-61 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Evidence Based Midwifery |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Publication status | Published - 01 Jun 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:1. Midwife, Lagan Valley Maternity Unit, 39 Hillsborough Road, Lisburn, Co Antrim BT28 1JP Northern Ireland. Email: [email protected] 2. Professor of midwifery research, head of the Maternal, Fetal and Infant Research Centre, Ulster University, Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim BT37 0QB Northern Ireland. Email: [email protected] 3. Lecturer in midwifery education, Queen’s University Belfast, University Road, Belfast BT7 1NN Northern Ireland. Email: [email protected] 4. Professor of psychology, Ulster University, Cromore Road, Coleraine, Co Londonderry BT52 1SA Northern Ireland. Email: [email protected] 5. Senior lecturer in computing, Ulster University, Northland Road, Co Londonderry BT48 7JL Northern Ireland. Email: [email protected] This research was funded by the NI Department for Employment and Learning. The authors would like to thank Dr Inez Cooke, clinical senior lecturer, Queen’s University Belfast and obstetrician at the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital Belfast, for her contribution to this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Royal College of Midwives.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Evidence-based midwifery
- Health professionals
- Heart disease
- Online educational resources
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Fundamentals and skills
- Maternity and Midwifery