Health-care utilisation amongst pregnant women who experience sleeping problems and/or tiredness or fatigue: secondary analysis of a cross-sectional survey of 1835 pregnant women
Sleeping problems and fatigue in pregnancy are often accepted as a normal part of pregnancy; however, these conditions can be linked to serious consequences for both the mother and child. Despite established links between sleeping disturbance and a wide range of pregnancy complications, little is known about the health-care utilisation of women experiencing sleeping problems and fatigue. This study addresses the existing gap in the literature by examining cross-sectional data to identify health service utilisation patterns of pregnant women experiencing sleeping problems and/or tiredness or fatigue.
In 2010, a sub-study of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health was conducted as a cross-sectional survey of 2445 women who had recently given birth. Associations between reported symptoms of sleeplessness and/or tiredness or fatigue and health service utilisation were determined using logistic regression analysis.
During their pregnancy, 15.2 % of women experienced sleeping problems while 35.4 % experienced tiredness or fatigue. Women most commonly consulted with an obstetrician (n = 96) or a general practitioner (GP) (n = 74) for their tiredness or fatigue rather than a midwife (n = 56). A substantial number of women sought help from a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioner for sleeping problems (33 %) or tiredness/fatigue (28 %).
Sleeping problems and/or tiredness or fatigue is reported by a reasonable percentage of pregnant women, and women obtain assistance from conventional and CAM practitioners for their symptoms, but not all seek help. Given the serious implications of untreated sleep- and fatigue-related symptoms for mother and baby, this area of research deserves and requires more attention.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 January 2017.
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