"They must understand we are people": Pregnancy and maternity service use among signing Deaf women in Cape Town.
Margaret W Gichane, Marion Heap, Mayara Fontes and 1 others
PMID 28416204WHAT IT FOUND
Most signing Deaf women in Cape Town attended antenatal care, but many could not understand staff.
They described writing and family interpreting as inadequate, and asked for professional sign language interpreters.
Key findings
01Forty-two signing Deaf women in Cape Town took part, and 39 of them received antenatal care during their most recent pregnancy.
02During antenatal care, 56% said they and health staff did not understand each other; during labor and delivery, about 65% said the same.
03Most participants asked for better communication access: 76% suggested hiring interpreters or training staff in basic sign language.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is a small convenience sample of 42 women recruited through Deaf community contacts and a database of people who had used an interpreter service, so it may over-represent women who already access services. The women reported their own antenatal visits, timing, clinic use, and delivery details, and some pregnancies were more than 10 years ago, so recall bias is possible. Only one author did the initial coding and theme combination, although a second author read the responses. The study cannot show whether poor communication caused adverse pregnancy outcomes; it was exploratory and did not test associations. The participants' strong call for interpreters may reflect how they were recruited through an interpreter service database, though the need for interpreters is reported in other studies.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include an author conflict-of-interest declaration. The listed publication types indicate research support from NIH extramural and non-U.S. government sources.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 31% miscarriage figure as a rate for all Deaf women in South Africa. The study included 42 women recruited through community and interpreter-service contacts, and the authors say the sample may not represent a national population.