PROM and PREM in Swedish perinatal care

It is important that women have access to care during the critical period around labour, delivery and the post-partum period coupled with the possibility of referral for the management of eventual obstetric emergencies. Greater effort is needed to improve the content and quality of the service offered. In addition, increased attention is required to ensure that particular groups of women, especially those living in rural areas, the poor and the less educated, obtain better access to antenatal services. Questions regarding expectations, how the communication with caregivers worked, if the parents experienced support from the healthcare personnel and if the partner felt engaged and has been seen; all these aspects as well as the parents' feeling of confirmation have been shown to affect the pregnant women's experiences of, among others, giving birth to great extent.

The first of January, 2013 a new national register based on the former national pregnancy register (Nationellt graviditetsregister (Graviditetsregistret, 2013)) through a merger of the maternal health care register (Mödrahälsovårdsregistret (MHV)), fetal diagnostic register (Fosterdiagnostikregistret (PNQf)), and the obstetric register (Obstetriska registret (PNQo). The goal is to gather information about the pregnant woman and her unborn child starting with the first registration visit to the maternal health care and until her last post-partum control visit 8-12 weeks. One of the goals with a common register is to give the same qualitative care nationally and to make the data collection and registration as easy for health care personnel.

The aim of using PROM and PREM within the Swedish perinatal health care is to ease the communication between the caregiver and the patient, and to involve the patient in care strategy as well as giving the possibility to follow up possible changes over time[i]. Other purposes could be to get a systematic knowledge about the self-reported health, make health-economic analyses and measure different treatments' effect on the self-reported health. Therefore, it is important that chosen factors cover the area and that the response alternatives will catch even small changes, as well as give the patient the possibility to evaluate what is important for her of him. Our overall aim is to determine factors affecting PROM and PREM in Swedish perinatal context based on the pregnancy data register (Graviditetsregistret ©).

Dr Pernilla Ny & Dr Atika Khalaf