Abstract
Background. Maternal nutritional knowledge and education play a significant role in influencing dietary and eating behaviour, and have been shown to have a positive impact on maternal health outcomes. Although, several studies have focused on the midwives’ role in providing healthy nutritional eating education for pregnant women, there are no systematic reviews assessing the effectiveness of healthy nutrition/diet education programmes provided for midwives who support pregnant women. Aim. To examine the effectiveness of healthy eating education programmes for improving midwives’ levels of knowledge and confidence in promoting healthy eating in pregnant women. Review methods. A three-stage comprehensive search of seven electronic databases as well as grey literature was conducted. Two independent reviewers assessed each paper before inclusion using the standardised critical appraisal instruments for evidence of effectiveness developed by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). All authors assessed full-text copies of the papers eligible for inclusion. Results. The search of the selected databases generated 1575 citations. Manual searching of the published articles and references of the final included studies identified three additional studies. After removing 549 duplicates, 1029 articles were screened by title and abstract against the inclusion criteria. A total of 774 studies were excluded after the title and abstract screening; 255 studies were assessed for full-text eligibility, of these 243 were excluded for irrelevant population, interventions, study design, and non-English publications. Finally, 12 articles met the inclusion criteria, reporting on 11 studies. Of these, four studies involved pretest-posttest interventions, and seven were descriptive cross-sectional studies; none were randomised controlled trial studies. A total of 7362 midwives, 562 midwifery students and 337 healthcare professionals were involved. All pretest-posttest studies reported a significant improvement in participating midwives’ knowledge and levels of confidence after receiving the education programme. Conclusion. This systematic review reports and summarises the findings of 11 studies that evaluated any diet and nutritional education programmes or training, using pre-defined educational and maternal outcomes, for midwives/student midwives. The evidence from the studies included in this review demonstrated a significant improvement in midwives’ nutritional knowledge and levels of confidence following participation in diet/nutritional education and training. Implications. There was some evidence that supported improvement in midwives’ levels of knowledge and confidence after participating in a structured healthy eating education and training programme. However, there is a lack of strong evidence as no randomised controlled trials were identified.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 84-93 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Evidence Based Midwifery |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 3 |
Publication status | Published or Issued - 2018 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Diet and nutrition
- Education programme
- Evidence-based midwifery
- Healthy eating
- Midwives
- Pregnancy
- Systematic review
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Fundamentals and skills
- Maternity and Midwifery