Maternity care survey 2018: national results

2. Introduction and Background

The Maternity Care Survey is a postal survey which was sent to a random sample of women who had a baby in February or March 2018. This is the third iteration of the survey, following on from the first run in 2013 and the second run in 2015. The survey asked about women’s experiences of maternity services, from antenatal care through to postnatal care at home. 

The focus of this report is on the national results of the survey. Comparisons have been made with the previous iterations of this survey where this is possible. 

Results at NHS Board and Hospital level are available via an online dashboard and excel files at www.gov.scot/MaternitySurvey. Infographics looking at some aspects of care across the maternity journey are also available at this link.

Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme

The Maternity Care Survey is one of a suite of national surveys which are part of the Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme. The surveys aim to provide local and national information on the quality of health and care services from the perspective of those using them. They allow local health and care providers to compare with other areas of Scotland and to track progress in improving the experiences of people using their services. 

Information about the other national care experience surveys is available at www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/careexperience.

The survey programme supports the three quality ambitions of the 2020 Vision^[1] – Safe, Effective, Person-centred – by providing a basis for the measurement of quality as experienced by service users across Scotland.  In particular the surveys support the person-centred quality ambition which is focused on ensuring that care is responsive to people’s individual preferences, needs and values. More information about the context for this survey is provided in Chapter 3 of this report.

Aims of the Survey

The survey’s specific objectives were:

For local improvement

• provide hospitals with information about women’s experiences of their service, relative to other hospitals in Scotland and to previous results;
• provide NHS Boards with information about women’s experiences in their respective areas and about variation within and between local areas.

National results

• inform progress towards implementation of recommendations from The Best Start: Maternity and Neonatal Care Plan^[2];
• identify variation within and between local areas, including if and how the level of positive and negative experiences have changed over time;
• highlight areas of best practice and areas for improvement.

Survey Methods

The survey was designed to provide results for individual Hospitals, as well as providing information for use by NHS Boards.

Women eligible to be sampled for the survey were those who gave birth in Scotland in February or March 2018 and were aged 17 or over at that date. In total, 5,064 surveys were sent to eligible respondents and 2,049 were returned completed, giving an overall response rate of 40 per cent.

Throughout this report, with the exception of the data in Chapter 4, analysis is presented as weighted average percentages. Weighting the results in this way provides results which are more representative of the sample population. A review of the weighting methodology was undertaken in advance of the 2018 survey, leading to some changes in the weights applied. 

Results from previous surveys have been backdated where appropriate to ensure comparability over time. All changes over time that are discussed in the report are statistically significant at the five per cent level.

More information about the survey design, response rates and methodology can be found in the Technical Report available at: www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781787816381.