Exploring the concept of continuous midwifery-led care and its dimensions in prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal periods

considering importance maternal cares, a study was aimed to exploring the concept of continuous care and its dimensions in prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal periods.
This was a content analysis qualitative study that performed using semi-structured in depth interviews. Conventional content analysis method used for data analysis simultaneously data gathering. Different strategies were adopted for ensuring the accuracy and the rigor of the findings such as prolonged engagement with the data and external peer check. The setting of study was healthcare, hospital and instruction centers of Kashan University of Medical Sciences.
Participants were eighteen midwives and five physicians who had different official positions.
The participants’ experiences revealed five concepts for the concept of continuous midwifery-led care which included of continuity, the process of care, education and informing, management, and professionalism. Continuity had 3 categories including Continuous physical access, Continuity of care in different time periods and Continuity of a psycho-emotional relationship. Philosophy of continuous care, Home care provision and Accountability of the process of care were the process of care categories. Continued promotion, target groups of educations, ethics, rights, backing up, implementation of program documentation and follow-up were other categories.
Continuous midwifery-led prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal care is a multidimensional and important concept. Given the differences in the health infrastructures of different countries as well as the unique characteristics of pregnancy, higher priorities are recommended to be given to continuous midwifery-led care and its dimensions.