Birthing in between cultural life-worlds: culture-sensitive guidance of young mothers with differing cultural roots in a hospital’s maternity care unit.

Despite a growing attention to the implications of migration and globalization, ethnic minority patients are still facing inequalities in healthcare, lower quality of care and lower health outcomes. In case of maternity care, young mothers additionally have to deal with the vulnerability of being pregnant and giving birth post-migration. Within the international literature, few studies are dedicated to the experiences of young mothers who gave birth in between cultural life-worlds. Still fewer attention has been paid to the mother’s experiences from their own point of view. Existing guidelines regarding culture-sensitive care in the hospital are diverse and often restricted to practical solutions. Even the definition of culture itself is ambiguous here, making it difficult to define the meaning of culture-sensitive guidance. Hence, a psychological understanding of the experiences of young mothers giving birth in between cultural life-worlds as well as a psychological perspective on the underlying meaning of culture-sensitive guidance is required.This research project aims at exploring the complexity of culture-sensitive care in the hospital setting by focusing on the experiences of Muslim women from Turkish or Moroccan descent in the context of maternity care units in Flanders. This will be investigated throughout three stages: 1) first, we will review the existing international empirical literature on patients’ experiences of the intercultural care encounter in the hospital (systematic literature review). 2) Secondly, the experiences of Muslim women in maternity care settings in Flanders, will be examined by focusing on the experiences of the female Muslim patients in the first place. Additionally, we will inquire into the perspective of autochthone healthcare professionals (empirical study with qualitative design). 3) finally, we will bring the research findings from phase 2 into dialogue with existing literature, theoretical perspectives and the clinical practice.

Keywords:Cultural sensitive care, Maternity care

Disciplines:Cultural and cross-cultural psychology

Project type:PhD project