Supporting smoking cessation among pregnant and postnatal women
Healthcare providers play a vital role
A recent systematic review has highlighted the vital role of healthcare providers in supporting smoking cessation among pregnant and postnatal women.
The study aimed to identify and analyse the best available evidence about the experiences of women who smoked tobacco during pregnancy and/or postnatally, specifically regarding how healthcare providers interacted with them about their smoking habits.
Additionally, the study aimed to provide recommendations for enhancing healthcare providers’ interventions regarding smoking during pregnancy and after childbirth, based on the synthesised research findings.
The review’s findings showed that when women lacked supportive healthcare provider interactions in relation to smoking during pregnancy or smoking postnatally, they had negative reactions that were not conducive to quitting smoking.
For example, in instances where healthcare providers were authoritarian (eg, condescending, judging) in their approaches toward the women, lacked understanding, or failed to provide helpful interventions to assist women to quit smoking, the women’s emotional responses included feeling victimised, frustrated, stressed, intimidated, coerced, apprehensive, guilty, and shameful. Their behavioural responses included defiance (ie, resisting advice to quit), being reticent (ie, reluctant to seek help for smoking), not being forthright about their smoking (ie, not disclosing or denying smoking or giving an inaccurate account of smoking), and wanting to smoke more (ie, a heightened need to smoke).
Conversely, when women had supportive interactions with their healthcare providers during pregnancy or postnatally, they had enhanced readiness for, or were successful in attaining, smoking behaviour change, including smoking cessation.
One recommendation stemming from the study is that healthcare providers implement accepted clinical practice guidelines with women who smoke prenatally or postnatally, using an approach that is person-centred, emotionally supportive, engaging (eg, understanding), and non-authoritarian.
The findings from the systematic review highlight the vital role that healthcare providers play in facilitating smoking cessation among pregnant and postnatal women. By strengthening interventions, healthcare providers have the opportunity to make a positive impact on the health and well-being of both mothers and their children.
The qualitative systematic review is published in the June 2023 issue of JBI Evidence Synthesis.
Small, Sandra; Maddigan, Joy; Swab, Michelle; Jarvis, Kimberly
JBI Evidence Synthesis 21(6):p 1066-1189, June 2023. | DOI: 10.11124/JBIES-22-00052