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Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand women’s pain experiences during their pregnancy
Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to women's pain belief for low back and pelvic pain.
RESEARCH APPROACH: Qualitative descriptive design.
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH: Participants comprised 11 postpartum women in a medical center in Taiwan. The purposive sampling was used to maximize variation in age, educational background, parity, and mode of delivery. Data were obtained using in-depth and semi-structural interviews in August 2007. Interview data were tape-recorded and transcribed in 24 hours and then verified to ensure accuracy of transcription in 2 days after each interview. Content analysis was used to abstract themes of the study. Initial codes were categorized into meaningful themes, and data saturation occurred when no new theme emerged.
FINDINGS: Four themes emerged, namely “safe passage is more important than pain relief”, “pain medicines are harmful to fetus”, “pain will disappear after delivery”, and “pain during pregnancy should be endured”. The themes frequently occurred with each other. Pregnant women considered safe passage is their most important task. Thus they were very sensitive to the potential harmful effects of pain medicine. Moreover, they suppose that their pain will disappear after delivery, leading them to tend to endure their pain without using medicine.
CONCLUSIONS & INTERPRETATION: For pregnant women, it is the most important to ensure fetus' safety. Hence, regardless how suffering the pain is, they choose not to use the analgesic to relieve their pain. Results of this study enhance the understanding of health professionals on how and why pregnant women regard their pain. Fetus' safety rather than pain relief is the focus of pregnant women. Thus, it is suggested that health professionals should provide them ways of pain management other than prescribing analgesics.
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