Results
During the two-week period, 180 women underwent universal screening.
Random sampling in the week following the introduction of universal
screening selected 95 women, of which 81 completed the pre-screening
questionnaire (85.26% completion rate). Of the 110 women eligible for
the post-screening telephone survey, 79 participants completed the
survey (71.82% completion rate). Reasons for non-completion of the
pre-screening survey included active labour deterring completion of the
survey, with the language barrier being a reason for non-completion of
the post-screening survey.
Patient demographics for both the pre-screening and post-screening
cohorts are presented in Table 1. There was no statistical difference
between the groups in terms of parity, occupation, highest education
level, ethnicity, and ability to speak English. Nevertheless, there was
a statistically significant difference between home occupancy between
the pre-screening cohort (mean=3.21, SD = 2.338) and the post-screening
cohort (mean=4.86, SD = 2.453), p = <0.05.
On the pre-screening questionnaire, 82.72% of participants agreed or
strongly agreed that they would be happy if the maternity unit offered
screening for all pregnant women for COVID-19 on admission to hospital,
with 12.35% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. 93.83% of
participants agreed or strongly agreed that having the COVID-19 test
would have a positive effect on the care provided to both themselves and
their babies, with 1.23% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. 88.89%
of participants agreed or strongly agreed that the test would have a
positive effect on their families, with 3.70% disagreeing or strongly
disagreeing. The remaining participants neither agreed nor disagreed
with the above statements.
The post-screening questionnaire showed that 94.94% of participants
agreed that they would be happy if their maternity unit offered
screening to all pregnant women for COVID-19 on admission to hospital.
Although 74.68 % of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that having
the COVID-19 test had a positive effect on the care provided to both
themselves and their babies, 11.39% disagreed or strongly disagreed.
Similarly, 69.62% of the participants either strongly agreed or agreed
that the test had a positive effect on their families with 10.13%
disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. Post-screening, there was a
significant shift towards women agreeing with the statement that they
would be happy if their maternity units offered screening for COVID-19
to all pregnant women on admission to hospital.
Nulliparous women were significantly more likely to agree that screening
for COVID-19 would have or had a positive effect on their own and their
babies care as compared to multiparous women. Nulliparous women were
also more likely to agree that screening would have or had a positive
effect on their families. There were no other significant associations
between demographical factors and answers to statements.
Table 2 summarises responses to statements in the pre-screening cohort.
Table 3 summarises responses to statements in the post-screening cohort.
Table 4 compares the responses in statements between the pre-screening
and post-screening groups.