The Parturient Women’s Privacy Preservation in the Delivery Rooms: A Qualitative Study

Introduction: Parturient women’s privacy preservation and respectful maternity care (RMC) in delivery room is an important principle in the high quality of midwifery care to achieve maternal satisfaction and positive childbirth experience. Hence, it is essential to make natural vaginal delivery (NVD) a positive experience and increase the mothers’ satisfaction. This study aimed to investigate the privacy preservation of parturient women’s in the delivery room.

Methods: Using conventional content analysis, this qualitative study was conducted from June 2018 to December 2020 at two hospitals and three health centers in Shahroud, Iran. Purposeful sampling was employed and it was continued till data saturation through in-depth interviews with 37 participants.

Results: The results of interviews with 21 women with NVD experience and 16 maternity health service providers resulted in the extraction of four themes including physical, spiritual-mental, informational, and social privacy.

Conclusion: Various mechanisms were found to promote the privacy and satisfaction of parturient women in the delivery room. They included the necessity continuous education, monitoring about mother’s privacy preservation and intervention to improve effective communication skills among staff in delivery rooms.