Research Proposal of Antenatal Care

This research proposal aims to improve the attendance of pregnant women in antenatal care through the introduction of support groups supervised by advanced nurse practitioners. The study will assess the effectiveness of this intervention in Saudi Arabia, where the prevalence of ignorance about antenatal care is high. The research will use qualitative methods, including interviews, to gather data and analyze the impact of the support groups.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE

1
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
Title:
The research proposal for the improvement of the attendance of the pregnant women in the
antenatal care
Thesis statement:
In Saudi Arabia, it was observed that the prevalence of ignorant mindset amongst the
women and adolescent is higher compared to other countries (Al-Ateeq et al. 2015). Therefore,
the advanced practice nurse should find a way of improving the attendance in the antenatal care
for the pregnant women for preventing the premature death.
Introduction:
Antenatal care is care before birth that includes the education screening, counselling,
treatment for promoting the wellbeing of the mother and foetus (Bahanshal et al. 2017).
Antenatal care also includes the advice, information as well as supplement given to the mother
such as folic acid to the patient (Siddiqui et al. 2016). However, it was often observed that a
significant amount of women are ignorant about seeking antenatal care or lack adequate
knowledge to seek clinical assistance (Al-Ateeq et al. 2015). Therefore, it gives rise to the
complication during the pregnancy and post pregnancy death. In Saudi Arabia, it was observed
that the prevalence of ignorant mindset amongst the individual is compared to other countries
(Al-Ateeq et al. 2015). The purpose of the study is to assess how the support group supervised
by the local practitioner can help women to receive antenatal care. This paper will provide an
outline of a research proposal including the aim of the paper, the research question, research
methodology and expected the outcome in the following paragraphs.

2
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
Discussion:
Background:
Pregnancy is still a critical issue amongst the world; Saudi Arabia is no different from
other countries. According to Fayed et al. (2017), in Saudi Arabia, complication during the
childbirth observed 7.4% and the majority of them preventable through better access to antenatal
care. Health professionals such as doctors, the advanced practitioner can prevent these critical
issues by coming from providing better access to the antenatal services to the women who are
pregnant or who are planning to conceive. Therefore, antenatal care is crucial for pregnant
women. In an antenatal care unit, routine check-up and care can detect preventable illness and
also abnormalities in the child and mother which in turn give the medications and precautions for
preventing pregnancy complications and premature deaths. The antenatal care unit also provide
fitted nutrition plan for the reduction of the applications (Al-Daghri et al. 2016). However, the
study suggested that in order to promote the good health of a mother, introduction of the support
group which is suggested by the advanced practitioner can reduce the complication of the
pregnancy by the improving the attendance of the pregnant women in the antenatal care. Pembe
et al. (2016) argued that supervision of the support group for reaching the services is to the
women who are ignorant enough not to seek clinical assistance. Therefore, antenatal care
education, as well as clinical care as an intervention by the supervision of the support group,
proved to be effective in improving the attendance in antenatal care.
Research aim and rational:
The aim of the study is to focus on the antenatal care for pregnant women and come up
with the strategy to improve the pregnant women attendance in the antenatal care unit.

3
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
Statement of purpose:
In the recent time, the pregnancy complication has become a common phenomenon. A
study by suggested that the pregnancy complication can leads to 300000 deaths every year in
women and adolescent around the globe. A study by Matthews et al. (2016), argued that more
than 4% of the women in the country not opting for the care even when they are offered antenatal
care. Moreover, they seek medical assistance when they admitted to the hospital for the first
time. Consequently, it increases the risk of developing pregnancy-related complications.
Therefore, the screening in antenatal care, any kind of complication like pregnancy diabetes or
hypertension can be detected earlier, and then the treatment for such complications can be started
to prevent any type of effect on the foetus. Another study by Peña‐Rosas et al. (2015), suggested
that the access to the care and associate arising awareness can be done but transportation acts as
a barrier for access to the antennal care. Cluver et al. (2015), also identified that the beliefs
women held by the women in the country are identified as another barrier for not seeking
antenatal care. In the majority of the cases, due to their personal and cultural beliefs, they tend to
refuse to go to the antenatal care which affected the health care (Meade and Dowswell 2015).
Therefore, it becomes important to consider Ernest approach from the side of the nurses to reach
out for the women in Saudi Arabia.
Research question:
How the introduction of support groups supervised by locally advanced nurse practitioner can
improve pregnant women attendance to antenatal care in Saudi Arabia?
Methodology:
The qualitative research method would be adopted in order to assess the effectiveness of
the support group supervision. The qualitative study would mainly involve the description and
discovering potential association of believers of the women and the complication during

4
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
pregnancy (Angland, Dowling and Casey 2014). Therefore, the qualitative method would be
suitable for meeting the goals and objective of the research project. A semi-structured interview
would be conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the supervision of the support work.
Participation will select for the quality research would be in between 25 to 45 years women who
were would be talking about their personal experience relevant to the pregnancy or any
complications. The participants would be selected on the basis of the inclusion criteria. These
inclusion criteria would be : (1) fluent in English (2) going through pregnancy (3) have lived
experience for someone going through pregnancy.
Conducting the interview:
The interview would be conducted with the nurses in face to face interaction mode. The open-
ended questionnaire would be prepared for face to face interview (Patton 2015). This mode of
the questionnaire would give scopes to discuss the feelings and believes of the participants which
would, in turn, give the idea of the effectiveness of supervision of the support workers in
improving the attendance in the antenatal care (Lewis 2015). The researches would ensure that
for every participant in the conducted research, the questionnaire would be same so that
interviewers can develop an understanding about the efficiency of the support group supervision
in antenatal care for the pregnant women (Glaser and Strauss 2017). The various perceptions of
the participants in each question and thereby researchers would be able to derive the various
point of view of the participants from the same questions (Taylor et al. 2015).
The primary data collection from the interview would be done for gaining an
understanding of the point of view of the participants regarding the support group supervisors
suggested by advanced practitioners (Merriam and Tisdell 2015). Secondary data collection
would mainly include the defining and conducting analysis. The data would be collected by

5
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
writing along with the assistance of the tape recorder in order to collect the missing point. For
data analysis, grounded theory would be applied for accurate data (Glaser and Strauss 2017).
Ethical consideration:
Maintaining ethics while conducting any research is crucial for the successful
accomplishment of the research. Therefore, care should be taken by the interviewer that they
should follow every ethics for the successful accomplishment of the research. the important
ethics, in this case, is maintaining the privacy of the participants in while they participate in the
study. Therefore, all of the recorded data would be kept in a locker and properly locked so that
the third party does not reach to the data. Another ethics that would be taken into consideration is
that the detailed motive of the study would be discussed with the participants before conducting
the interview. Moreover, different procedures of the study also discussed with the participants
for giving a summative overview of the conducted research. All of the participants would sign in
the written paper containing details of the study so that no further legal obligations can rise later.
Another important ethics that need to consider is that no participants would be forced for
participating in the interview for the sake of the research. Furthermore, No participants would be
forced to disclose any details that they do not want to disclose. They would only discuss the
feelings as long as they want to participate in the interview voluntarily.
Conclusion:
The successful completion of the study would help researchers to get a detailed idea
about the different believes of the women for not seeking medical help or refuse the facilities
when offered the antenatal care. The accomplishment of the study would help researchers to
understand how well the support group supervisions are reaching to provide care to the pregnant
women in order to reduce the nursing care. It would help in assuring the uninterrupted service by
support group suggested by the general practitioner for the pregnant women. It would also help

6
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
researchers to come up with better interventions for pregnant women for reduction of the
complication during pregnancy and premature death.

7
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
References:
Al-Ateeq, M.A. and Al-Rusaiess, A.A., 2015. Health education during antenatal care: the need
for more. International journal of women's health, 7, p.239.
Al-Daghri, N.M., Al-Saleh, Y., Aljohani, N., Sulimani, R., Al-Othman, A.M., Alfawaz, H.,
Fouda, M., Al-Amri, F., Shahrani, A., Alharbi, M. and Alshahrani, F., 2017. Vitamin D status
correction in Saudi Arabia: an experts’ consensus under the auspices of the European Society for
Clinical and Economic Aspects of Osteoporosis, Osteoarthritis, and Musculoskeletal Diseases
(ESCEO). Archives of osteoporosis, 12(1), p.1.
Angland, S., Dowling, M., and Casey, D. 2014. Nurses’ perceptions of the factors which cause
violence and aggression in the emergency department: a qualitative study. International
emergency nursing, 22(3), 134-139.
Bahanshal, S., Coughlin, S. and Liu, B., 2017. For You and Your Baby (4YYB): Adapting the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Text4Baby Program for Saudi Arabia. JMIR
research protocols, 6(2).
Cluver, C., Gyte, G.M., Sinclair, M., Dowswell, T. and Hofmeyr, G.J., 2015. Interventions for
helping to turn term breech babies to head first presentation when using external cephalic
version. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (2).
Fayed, A.A., Wahabi, H., Mamdouh, H., Kotb, R. and Esmaeil, S., 2017. Demographic profile
and pregnancy outcomes of adolescents and older mothers in Saudi Arabia: analysis from Riyadh
Mother (RAHMA) and Baby cohort study. BMJ open, 7(9), p.e016501.

8
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L., 2017. Discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative
research. Routledge.
Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L., 2017. Discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative
research. Routledge.
Lewis, S., 2015. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five
approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), pp.473-475.
Matthews, A., Haas, D.M., O'Mathúna, D.P. and Dowswell, T., 2015. Interventions for nausea
and vomiting in early pregnancy. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (9).
Meade, T. and Dowswell, E., 2015. Health-related quality of life in a sample of Australian
adolescents: gender and age comparison. Quality of Life Research, 24(12), pp.2933-2938.
Merriam, S.B. and Tisdell, E.J., 2015. Qualitative research: A guide to design and
implementation. John Wiley & Sons.
Patton, M.Q., 2015. Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice.
Pembe, A.B., Carlstedt, A., Urassa, D.P., Lindmark, G., Nyström, L. and Darj, E., 2010. Quality
of antenatal care in rural Tanzania: counselling on pregnancy danger signs. BMC pregnancy and
childbirth, 10(1), p.35.
Peña‐Rosas, J.P., De‐Regil, L.M., Garcia‐Casal, M.N. and Dowswell, T., 2015. Daily oral iron
supplementation during pregnancy. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (7).
Siddiqui, A.F., 2016. Late antenatal booking and its predictors among mothers attending primary
health care centers in Abha, Saudi Arabia. Rawal Medical Journal, 41(1), pp.72-76.

9
RESEARCH PROPOSAL OF ANTENATAL CARE
Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A
guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.