Djanogly, Tanya;
Nicholls, Jacqueline;
Whitten, Melissa;
Lanceley, Anne;
(2022)
Choice in episiotomy – fact or fantasy: a qualitative study of women’s experiences of the consent process.
BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
, 22
, Article 139. 10.1186/s12884-022-04475-8.
Preview |
Text
Choice_in_episiotomy_-_fact_or_fantasy_a_qualitati.pdf - Published Version Download (797kB) | Preview |
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Consent to episiotomy is subject to the same legal and professional requirements as consent to other interventions, yet is often neglected. This study explores how women experience and perceive the consent process. METHODS: Qualitative research in a large urban teaching hospital in London. Fifteen women who had recently undergone episiotomy were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide and data was analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Three themes captured women’s experiences of the episiotomy consent process: 1) Missing information – “We knew what it was, so they didn’t give us details,” 2) Lived experience of contemporaneous, competing events – “There’s no time to think about it,” and 3) Compromised volitional consent – “You have no other option.” Minimal information on episiotomy was shared with participants, particularly concerning risks and alternatives. Practical realities such as time pressure, women’s physical exhaustion and their focus on the baby’s safe delivery, constrained consent discussions. Participants consequently inferred that there was no choice but episiotomy; whilst some women were still happy to agree, others perceived the choice to be illusory and disempowering, and subsequently experienced episiotomy as a distressing event. CONCLUSIONS: Consent to episiotomy is not consistently informed and voluntary and more often takes the form of compliance. Information must be provided to women in a more timely fashion in order to fulfil legal requirements, and to facilitate a sense of genuine choice.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Choice in episiotomy – fact or fantasy: a qualitative study of women’s experiences of the consent process |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12884-022-04475-8 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-022-04475-8 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Keywords: | Episiotomy, Consent, Patient experience, Qualitative |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL EGA Institute for Womens Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10144222 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
