If you are a postnatal care provider or guideline developer and would like to share your perspective on this topic in a 30-45 minute online interview, please find more information and the sign-up link here.
Development of Australia’s first national postnatal guideline (LEAPP) is well underway.
In a clinical area that often suffers from fragmented care delivery, the LEAPP guideline offers an opportunity to standardise postnatal care practices across Australia. Unfortunately, the existence of a high-quality guideline does not guarantee its use in clinical practice. Barriers to implementation can result in guideline underutilisation, in turn leading to non-standardised and non-evidence-based care practices (1,2).
Identifying contextual barriers to implementation and addressing these via targeted strategies has been shown to improve guideline adherence (2–5).
Our research team at The University of Melbourne and Burnet Institute are performing a qualitative study to identify the common barriers and facilitators to postnatal guideline implementation in Australia, and to explore strategies that may enhance uptake of and adherence to the LEAPP guideline.
As part of this study, we have conducted interviews with postnatal facility managers, and are now looking to talk with postnatal care providers (midwives, obstetricians, maternal and child health nurses), and postnatal guideline developers.
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