According to a new study on maternity care during the Covid pandemic, the service providers faced more challenges than before while taking care of patients. Many health care workers had to deal with a lot of Covid concerns that put the health of their family members at risk during the pandemic situation.
Maternity Care Becomes More Challenging During The Pandemic
The study also aimed to understand the impact of the pandemic on cesarean birth rates across the country. A survey was done among health care workers to know about their experiences in the pandemic situation while offering maternity care.
Several patients had to cancel in-person visits at the clinics due to the pandemic as per the available data. As an alternative option, they opted for telehealth services in most cases. While this was not such a big problem in the initial months.
Patients faced a lot of inconveniences when they approached labor. At that crucial time, patients had to wait for a long time before they were admitted to hospitals.
However, this situation helped many women as they waited till the last minute to go to the hospital during labor. In this way, they went to hospitals with active labor, and there was less need to induce labor artificially. This, in turn, impacted the cesarean deliveries at various hospitals across the country.
When it comes to wearing protective gear, nurses felt that this restricted their movement throughout the day. Most of them had difficulty getting adjusted to the PPE kits during the early days of the pandemic.
This also led to fatigue and other issues among the health care workers. Apart from that, the nurses had to be masked completely for several hours every day, which took a toll on their bodies.
As the entry of visitors was restricted to a large extent due to Covid restrictions, several women could not find good emotional support from friends and family members during the pandemic. In some cases, women went to labor alone as none of the family members was allowed inside the hospitals during the pandemic.
Such restrictions worked partially in favor of the nurses as they had fewer visitors to handle during the pandemic. In this way, they could focus their attention entirely on the patients. In some cases, even patients benefited greatly from this measure as they got good rest without any disturbance from visitors during maternity care.
One of the most important concerns voiced by health care workers was regarding the health of their own family members. As the health care workers were at high risk of exposure to the pandemic, they felt distanced when approaching their family members.
Some nurses were not comfortable going back home as it meant putting their children and family members at risk. Such behavior was more evident during the early days of the pandemic when the vaccines were still not readily available.
Experts feel that proper measures need to be in place to provide emotional support to nurses and other health care workers. In this way, they will be able to offer better services to the patients in the long run. The challenges concerning maternity care still remain valid to a major extent as the pandemic continues to haunt the health system.
However, the availability of vaccines has reduced the concerns among patients and health care workers to some extent. Recent studies have shown that getting the booster dose is a good option to fight Omicron.
Many women who go into labor are already vaccinated, and they have some degree of protection against the infection. In this manner, the current situation is slightly better than what it was during the early days of the pandemic.
