Scientists in Malmo University examine effect of the violence on pregnancy and labour.
2011-04-14
Does experience of violence affect a woman’s labour during delivery? And how do midwives in maternity care deal with the issue of violence against pregnant women? These are questions that Hafrún Finnbogadóttir, a researcher at Malmö University in Sweden, has studied. She is now presenting her findings in a licentiate thesis.
Domestic violence, especially violence against pregnant women, is still a shameful subject. This is despite the fact that it is a severe public health issue which threatens both the mother-to-be and the unborn child's health outcomes.Few Swedish studies have examined how common physical violence against pregnant women is, and those studies available show that the prevalence is widespread namely between 1.3 to 11.0 percent of pregnant women in Sweden
Hafrún Finnbogadóttir, a researcher at the Faculty of Health and Society at Malmö University in Sweden, and with long clinical experience as a midwife, became aware, about twelve years ago, of the major health problems caused by problems such as violence against pregnant women.
“I realised that as a midwife I must have encountered many of these women in my work and that I neither had the knowledge nor the readiness to deal with them,” she says.
This is one of the reasons Finnbogadóttir chose to focus her research on violence – both physical and mental – against pregnant women.
“I realised that as a midwife I must have encountered many of these women in my work and that I neither had the knowledge nor the readiness to deal with them,” she says.
This is one of the reasons Finnbogadóttir chose to focus her research on violence – both physical and mental – against pregnant women.
