Improving the Experience of Pregnant Women in Antenatal Care

Running head: HEALTHCARE
The research proposal for the improvement of the experience of the pregnant women in the
antenatal care
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Literature Review
Factors leading to fatal pregnancies
Study conducted by Hafez, Dorgham and Sayed (2014) highlighted that every year
nearly 5, 29,000 women encounter death throughout the world due to pregnancy related
issues. Nearly 118 women suffer from life threatening issues and high level of severe acute
morbidity due to pregnancy related complications or ectopic pregnancy. In Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia (KSA), there is high rate of maternal morbidity and the percentage is stable or has
experienced negligible decline during the last 10 years. The reason behind this is high-risk
pregnancy among the women in KSA. High-risk pregnancy is defined as any fatal threats
associated with fetus, mother or neonate. In KSA, the pregnancy of related deaths is high due
to young age of the mother, interval of less than one year between two pregnancies and due to
conceiving more than 4 times during the fertile stage of life. In under-developed countries
like Saudi Arabia, pregnancy related deaths or poor outcomes of pregnancy is also associated
with lack of proper nutrition to the mother while she is pregnant, lack of proper medical
checkup during pregnancy and lack of proper nursing assistance during the time of delivery,
anemia, unmanaged blood glucose and blood pressure levels. Other factors that are
highlighted in the study conducted by Hafez, Dorgham and Sayed (2014) include obesity
during pregnancy leading to miscarriage and gap in knowledge among the Saudi Arabian
women towards cesarean section and thus failing to provide the consent on time and
endangering the life of both the mother and the child. Apart all these factors the pregnancy
health related analysis tool and interview questionnaire among women in KSa highlighted
that the major threats of the pregnancy related death in Saudi Arabia occurs due to teenage
pregnancy (Hafez, Dorgham and Sayed 2014). The main strength of the study conducted by
Hafez, Dorgham and Sayed (2014) is it used two different tools for the collection of the data.
First tool used was Morrison and Olsen High risk scoring inventory tool, which is used to

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assess pregnancy risks of women. The second tool include interview questionnaire sheet that
collected mainly the socio-demographic information of the pregnant women starting from
financial status of the family, age of marriage, surgical histories and husband’s
consanguinity. However, the study has sudden limitations like though the study was
conducted by the use of the descriptive cross-sectional approach; the low risk pregnancy
group women are not included in the study. Moreover, the study also lacked a defined control
group in order to compare the data. Another limitation of the study is, the study used self-
reported questionnaire. Brutus, Aguinis and Wassmer (2013) stated that self-reported
questionnaire have chances of encountering personal bias. Under this context, it can be said
that the majority of the Saudi Arabian women are limited knowledge about their
gynecological problems like vaginal discharge, missing of menstruation cycle and
information regarding the chronic vaginal or pelvic inflammation or frequency of vaginal
douches. These limited knowledge about gynecology related information restricted the path
of comprehensive assessment of the pregnancy related health risk of the women in Saudi
Arabia (Mohamed et al. 2015). Hafez, Dorgham and Sayed (2014) recommended that proper
screening technique must be used for all the pregnant women in KSA in the antenatal clinics
in order to analyze their risk of pregnancy and this help to reduce pregnancy related death in
KSA.
Perception of the Saudi Arabian women in the domain of pregnancy and health
Alyaemni et al. (2013) conducted a study in order explore the perception of the Saudi
Arabian women in the domain of how gendered social structures affect their overall health in
understanding. The overall study in turn helped in understanding the how their health
perception promotes generation in the gender based health-related inequality. Alyaemni et al.
(2013) used qualitative study design under which they conducted both face-to-face in-depth

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interviews and focus group interviews of 66 married women in the Riyadh city. The analysis
of the interview highlighted that the majority of the women perceived their health status poor
in comparison to men. They women of the Riyadh also highlighted that their frequent child
bearing, demanding domestic and care giving roles are the main determining factors behind
poor physiological health status. Some of the women also highlighted that their domestic life
is filled with psychological; stress, moreover, they are restricted with limited mobility access
that prevents them to reach put to healthcare services at the time of health related
emergencies and thus increasing the health inequalities. Moreover, the focus group interviews
highlighted that many feels that since males are the main bread earner of the family, they can
only enjoy the privilege of healthcare while their requirement of healthcare access might lead
to the generation marital conflicts and this fear or misconception compels them to keep
numb. The paper main highlighted that the masculine norms prevalent in the social life of the
Saudi Arabia are the main reasons behind the health inequalities among men and women and
this can be an important reason behind high pregnancy related death in Saudi Arabia.
However, the study is limited in the domain of sample size, the interview was conducted over
66 participants only, and this restricted the scope of the generalization of the data. Fayed et
al. (2017) reported that women in Saudi Arabia who are conceiving for the first time in their
life or who are unmarried have gap in knowledge about the importance of the nutritional diet
and hygiene both before and after the pregnancy. This increase the chances of the pregnancy
related deaths and also finding relation with why teenage pregnancies are more prone to fatal
risks as highlighted by Brutus, Aguinis and Wassmer (2013). However, the study of Mohsen
et al. (2013) is limited as they covers they teratogenic, folic acid and vitamin aspects of the
diet plan and not a comprehensive nutritional approach was undertaken. The study conducted
by Zaki and Albarraq (2014) make the target group too specific and confined their sample to
only the pregnant women in Saudi Arabia. Their aim was to analyze the extent of the