Meeting the Needs of Postpartum Women: Provider Perspectives on Maternal Contraceptive Care in Pediatric Settings.

Abstract

Closely spaced, mistimed, and unwanted pregnancies are common among postpartum women and can lead to adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes. Women inconsistently attend postpartum obstetric visits, though they reliably interface with pediatric providers during the postpartum months, presenting novel opportunities to identify and address unmet family planning needs. We conducted a qualitative study to explore pediatric provider perspectives on addressing maternal family planning in three settings: a neonatal intensive care unit, a primary care clinic, and a high-risk infant follow-up clinic. Pediatric providers were generally open to incorporating postpartum family planning screening and counseling into a pediatric encounter, if given appropriate training and implementation support. Providers largely agreed that contraceptive provision to women was not feasible in their practices, and they shared ideas for utilizing the pediatric encounter to connect women with comprehensive contraceptive care. Pediatric providers perceived postpartum family planning screening and counseling, and not contraceptive provision, as potentially acceptable and feasible in their practice settings. These exploratory findings justify further investigation to assess their generalizability and to develop postpartum family planning interventions for pediatrics.