A qualitative study on the woman’s and health care providers’ perspective on good contraceptive counselling

Title

The key to success – a qualitative study on the woman’s and health care providers’ perspective on good contraceptive counselling

Background

Contraceptive counselling is an important opportunity for health promotion for sexual and reproductive health. The Swedish guidelines state the aim of the counselling, but health care providers are free to develop their own strategies to reach this aim. Contraceptive counselling differs from many other health care consultations because the health care recipient is healthy and does not access health care because of disease. The health care recipients’ expectations and desideratum on a health care consultation are of importance for satisfaction with care. Little is known about Swedish women’s expectations and desideratum on routine contraceptive counselling.

Aim

The aim of the project is to explore what characterizes good contraceptive counselling, both from a health care recipient and health care providers perspective.

Method

The project has a qualitative design. Study 1 consists of individual semi structured interviews with a strategic sample of women of reproductive age. Study 2 consists of focus group discussions with health care providers who regularly conduct contraceptive counselling. Both studies will use an inductive content analysis.

Relevance

Contraceptive counselling constitutes one of the cornerstones in the Swedish health promoting and preventive work within sexual and reproductive health. Exploring what characterizes good contraceptive counselling will create a foundation on which we can develop a golden standard. This will be useful for both new and experienced health care providers to enhance their counselling. Increased knowledge of women’s’ experiences and desideratum is important to give health care providers the possibility to conduct their counselling in the best way possible. Our hope is that this project will provide information valuable to realize contraceptive counselling’s potential as a health promoting meeting and by extension contribute to an enhanced sexual and reproductive health among women in reproductive age.

Funding

Uppsala University, Sophiahemmet Association

Research group

Principal investigator: Jenny Stern, PhD, Sophiahemmet University
Maria Grandahl, PhD, Uppsala University
Helena Volgsten, Associate professor, Uppsala university