Changing birth places to care for healthcare workers, lessons from the pandemic: a scoping review.

Abstract

Background: Together with women giving birth, healthcare professionals involved in perinatal care faced significant challenges due to Covid-19 restrictions. The birth environment has been affected, influencing the quality and nature of interactions between care providers, women, and their families as well as the quality of care provided to women.

Aim: To identify, categorize and reflect on the most relevant aspects of the experience of healthcare workers, especially obstetricians and gynecologists, involved in the peripartum period, after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic up till now.

Methods: A scoping review was conducted. After conducting a literature search using a variety of online data- bases, 22 articles were included, and the main/recurrent themes were identified.

Results: The following main themes were described: fear of the virus, changes in the way care is provided, increase in the workload, mental health, psychological distress, support strategies, university education, and perspectives of health managers.

Discussion: Standard maternity departments appeared not appropriate to face the pandemic. Psychological distress on perinatal healthcare workers’, the majority of whom were women, led to the impairment of their mental health, affecting the quality of care provided to women.  A key role was played by healthcare managers support in shaping how doctors can cope and recover, and in reducing the mental health impact.

Conclusion: It is very important to address some of the most relevant issues to acknowledge the role of healthcare workers and improve the health systems organization to face future pandemics.