2024 Volume 38 Issue 2 Pages 238-249
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to clarify the actual situation of consultation activities for women with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy conflict, and issues of counselors' collaboration with midwives at the Pregnancy (Ninshin) SOS consultation service.
Subjects and Methods
Surveyed were a majority (N=53) facilities nationwide with consultation services by Pregnancy SOS. A total of 318 people, including one administrator from each facility and up to five counselors, were surveyed using an anonymous web-based or questionnaire survey. The survey included 14 items for the administrators, such as business type, number of counselors, and issues of the facility, and 29 items for the counselors, such as conflicts and difficulties, and what they expected from midwives. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the quantitative data, and qualitative data were coded by semantic content and summarized into categories at a higher level of abstraction.
Results
Responses were obtained from 33 (62.0%) administrators and 84 (32.0%) counselors. The largest number of administrators was 12 (36.4%) in their 50s, and 13 (39.4%) were midwives. Issues faced by the administrators in their activities were: financial issues that included difficult to secure stable funding; human resource issues included difficult to ensure counseling quality and lack of human resources, and other issues included loss of support and difficulty in well-known activities. The average age of the counselors was 52, and the average experience of working with Pregnancy SOS was 3.9 years. The counselors' conflicts and difficulties included challenges in establishing a system of cooperation with other facilities and barriers to continuing effective support activities. Requests for cooperation from other midwives and obstetric medical institutions included establishment and expansion of a close and flexible cooperation system and involvement and flexible response by understanding the people concerned.
Conclusion
There were various challenges noted by administrators and counselors in continuing the activities of the hot-line service “Pregnancy SOS” such as financial issues, secure human resource, and the way to collaborate with other facilities. Counselors had difficulties with: support and collaboration, because they faced a wide variety of support for consulters with diverse backgrounds, establishing a system of collaboration to solve the problems of consulters, barriers to providing effective support, evaluating consultation responses and the psychological burden of responding to consultations. They also asked midwives and obstetric medical institutions to: review their collaboration and response to consulters, participate in consultation activities, and promote sex education.
