How can midwives utilise the teachable moment in pregnancy for women: A focus on the role of language

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Interactions with healthcare professionals in pregnancy can create high levels of motivation in women which can lead to changes to health behaviours, labelled a 'teachable moment' (Lawson & Flocke, 2009). Healthcare services have clear care pathways during pregnancy meaning an increase in frequency of contact and first interactions with healthcare professionals for some women. Changes to behaviour can see the adoption of healthy behaviours such as physical activity and also the reduction in risk behaviours. Thus, pregnancy offers an opportunity to have short and long term impact on the physical and mental health of mother and baby. Language used by healthcare professionals is central to the relationship and must be respectful and enable women to feel comfortable to share their mental and physical health experiences and concerns. Research has suggested that healthcare professionals training should include communication (Vermeir, et al., 2015). The Royal College of Midwives have recently launched a project looking at language used by midwives in practice, with a focus on the use of terms such as 'normal birth' (https://www.rcm.org.uk/what-is-the-rebirth-project/). Health Psychology provides evidence-based theories and techniques to inform good practice and the inclusion of health psychology theory and techniques (e.g., behaviour change techniques) has been found to be acceptable to student midwives (Hart et al., 2018).This programme of PhD work will take an interdisciplinary approach from health psychology and midwifery with the aim of designing and testing an intervention following the Medical Research Council guidelines (MRC, 2006). This PhD builds on the existing work of the supervisors and previous PhD students. The intervention will be for midwives and will focus on the use of language. Following the intervention, midwives will be able to actively detect and diagnose health behaviours that require change to support women/birthing peoples' short and long term mental and physical health. The work will start with a systematic review and take a mixed method approach employing qualitative methods to develop theory and investigate acceptability of the intervention, and quantitative techniques to investigate efficacy. The programme will involve key stakeholder input throughout with several public engagement events planned to inform the programme of work and disseminate findings.