Maternity providers’ moral experiences addressing maternal drug use
Abstract
Background Addressing drug use among pregnant and postpartum women is complicated by the social, ethical, and legal interplay between maternal and child needs. The moral experiences of providers as they care for this population are poorly understood. The purpose of this review is to synthesize the qualitative literature on the moral experiences of prescribing maternity providers managing the care of pregnant and postpartum women who use drugs (PPWUD), specifically focused on drug testing and child welfare reporting decisions. Methods The Hunt and Carnevale (2011) bioethics framework was used to define moral experience as “a person’s sense that values that he or she deem important are being realized or thwarted in everyday life.” A systematic search of PubMed, PsycINFO, and CINAHL resulted in 31 eligible articles. Study quality was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research from the Joanna Briggs Institute (2015). Thematic narrative analysis was used to synthesize results and identify themes. Findings Overall, maternity providers’ experiences were characterized by ethical conflicts influenced by provider-level and policy-level factors. Even when endorsing patient autonomy and parental rights, no maternity providers endorsed continued maternal substance use that placed the fetus or child at significant risk. Structural constraints within healthcare systems and punitive laws were cited as significant barriers to providing optimal care to PPWUD.…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Characterization and Analysis of Porosity and Pore Structures
- Practical considerations for conducting ecotoxicity test methods with manufactured nanomaterials: what have we learnt so far?
- Dental Optical Coherence Tomography
- Radiation-shielding concrete: A review of materials, performance, and the impact of radiation on concrete properties
- Testing entanglement of annihilation photons
- Calanus finmarchicus seasonal cycle and diapause in relation to gene expression, physiology, and endogenous clocks
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.