Developing maternal health professionals capacity to facilitate a POSitive MATernity experience for women with cancer Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing maternal health professionals capacity to facilitate a POSitive MATernity experience for women with cancer

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

A multidisciplinary discussion is necessary to tackle a complex and infrequent medical problem such as cancer occurring during pregnancy. Pregnancy does not predispose to cancer, but cancers occurring in women of reproductive age are encountered during pregnancy (Amant F, Han SN, Gziri MM, Vandenbroucke T, Verheecke M, Van Calsteren K. 2015). As the trend for delaying pregnancy into the later reproductive years continues, physicians expect to see more cases of cancer complicating pregnancy (NA Pavlidis – ‎2000; Oxford Academic), although the question is no longer whether to continue the pregnancy (Carmel Armon, MD, MSc, MHS;2015) or save the mother.
Pregnant women labeled as high risk are exposed and vulnerable (Berg, Lundgren, & Lindmark, 2003). Emotionally, they are more anxious, worried, and ambivalent about their pregnancies (Gupton, Heaman, & Cheung, 2001; Hatmaker & Kemp, 1998; Mercer, 1990). The pregnancy experience has moreover an impact on parental self-efficacy beliefs and parenting behaviours and consequently on the child’s wellbeing (Cynthia W Moore & oth; 2015). The development of bonding to the new born and how to support new mothers with cancer through this process is also a recognized issue.
Despite the good number of guidelines, from a medical perspective, for managing patients with cancer during pregnancy (e.g. Nice Guidelines; ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines Guidelines 2010/2013, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) Green-top guidelines), maternity services, charities, non-governmental organisations, and their professionals (project’s direct beneficiaries, such as midwives, doulas, health visitors, counsellors and therapists) usually take pot-luck on guidelines on how to offer a positive experience of maternity to women with cancer (Behruzi R1, Hatem M, Goulet L, Fraser W, Leduc N, Misago C.; 2010). Even Midwifery2030 pathway, based on the State of the World’s Midwifery 2014, starts from the premise that its focus is on healthy women, leaving maternity services again without a guide for supporting cancer complicating pregnancies which seems to be a grey area which seems to be the grey area that falls between oncology and gynaecology.
The aim of this collaboration is an exchange of good practices in the field of maternity & pregnancy and in supporting women with cancer to bring their own voices into the conversation. This will be reinforced by a solid, theoretical framework from the two scientific partner organizations (psycho-oncology and pediatric psychology). Our maternity staff will also have a significant role in quality improvement could be strengthened if they were enabled to contribute to policy discussions and key decisions affecting midwifery services.
This project will build a shared vision for a high-quality, high-value maternity care system for cases of complex needs. Being partners unique in their identity and expertise, the aims and objectives of this proposal can be reached only through an European based partnership.

Significant strategic aims:
To establish guidelines/recommendations that can be applied by partner organisations and,later adopted by, other local agencies in order to start shaping the standard, consistency and accuracy of support offered to women undergoing high-risk pregnancy & maternity by maternity staff;
To draw attention too, and stimulate debate around, the profile of cancer and pregnancy among the general public, maternity staff, stakeholders/policymakers
To develop and reinforce a European level network, increasing the capacity of each organization to operate at transnational level

Operational objectives :
To draw up recommendations for midwives and maternity staff in order to enable women to have a more positive maternity experience
To transfer the results and learning to other health professionals at local, regional, national, building gradually a network of services and at European level throughdissemination
To collaboratively draft a reflection paper, intended to stimulate the debate to include the results of the project in the already existitng European Cancer Observatory in order to inform future research

Tangible results
1.DESK REVIEW ‘Cancer during pregnancy: its influence on the woman wellbeing and the mother child relationship’
2.Guidelines “RECCOMENDATIONS for a positive maternity experience in women with cancer” aimed at maternity health professionals/services about providing information, advice and support, from diagnosis, through treatment and longer-term management.
The partnership wants the end product to be a starting point for performance improvement; and it strongly believes that it has to be the result of a balance between rigor and pragmatism.
With this in mind, two other actions will contributes to the final development: interviews to the women with a past experience of cancer complicating pregnancy (indirect beneficiaries) and feedback from maternity staff (direct beneficiaries).
3.Reflection PAPER

Project Website

http://pregnancyandcancer.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 41175 Eur

Project Coordinator

Il Melograno Centro Informazione Maternità e Nascita & Country: IT

Project Partners

• S..I.P.P.Ped.-Societa’ Italiana di Psicologia Pediatrica
• Mummy’s Star
• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
• El Parto es Nuestro