Health professionals’ experiences and views related to obstetric ultrasound in Rwanda and Vietnam

Background Obstetric ultrasound has become an indispensable part of maternity care in high-income countries, where it is universally used for screening, diagnostic and surveillance purposes. In low-income countries, insufficient numbers of trained health professionals’ is commonly a barrier to obstetric ultrasound use. Globally, health professionals’ encounter complex clinical situations in which rapid technical improvements in fetal surveillance and pregnancy interventions are components that influence clinical decisions, thereby implicating maternal and fetal health outcomes. Aims The overall aim of this thesis was to explore health professionals’ experiences and views on the role of obstetric ultrasound in relation to clinical management, including ethical aspects, in two low-to-middle-income countries with different characteristics, cultures, religions and health care systems. Methods Study I (Rwanda) and Study III (Vietnam) are based on focus group discussions in which data were analysed using content analysis. Study I included six focus group discussions with 23 midwives recruited from six different hospitals in the area of Kigali and in the Southern province. Study III included four focus group discussions with 25 midwives working at three different hospitals in the Hanoi area. Study II (Rwanda) and Study IV (Vietnam) are cross-sectional studies using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s chi-square test and logistic regression analyses. A questionnaire, including items based on the results from previous qualitative studies, was used as the data collection tool. For Study II, health professionals (midwives, nurses, obstetricians, other physicians; N=907) working at 108 health facilities representing all provinces of Rwanda were recruited. Study IV constituted a regional sample of 824 health professionals (midwives, obstetricians/gynecologists) working at 29 health facilities in urban, semi-urban and rural parts of Hanoi, Vietnam. Main findings Obstetric ultrasound was regarded as a highly valued tool for pregnancy management in Rwanda as well as in Vietnam (Papers I–IV). In Rwanda, access to ultrasound was described as poor, especially for women living in rural areas (Paper I). In contrast, access to obstetric ultrasound was described as being very high in all health facilities in urban, semi-urban and rural areas of Hanoi (Paper III & Paper IV). In Rwanda, if a pregnancy was considered normal, obstetric ultrasound was not routinely performed (Paper