What is it about?

This article is about the lived experiences of those who achieved a smokefree pregnancy after attending an NHS in-house maternity tobacco treatment service, with an incentive scheme . The service user’s voice and experiences are a vital part of planning services to improve maternity safety. Families that feel involved and receive personalised, non-judgemental care from health services may make behavioural changes impacting their families’ lives.

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Why is it important?

Continued smoking of tobacco during pregnancy by parents causes an increase in poor pregnancy outcomes of miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight and stillbirth, with other harmful health outcomes during childhood and beyond. Evidence has shown that more people stop smoking during pregnancy than at any other time of their lives. Pregnancy is an opportunity to offer the right support and treatment to enable more people to remain smokefree during and beyond birth. Balancing giving factual information in a non-judgmental way requires the service practitioners to have insight into their skills. This research provides the service with feedback, both positive and negative from the users. Using the correct approach to maintain the pregnant person's dignity will have a higher chance of smokefree success.

Perspectives

It is important that health care professionals are aware of the impact of their language and approach. Some participants reflected on their shame and the stigma they felt from other people for smoking during pregnancy. They commented on feeling these emotions when treated by other stop smoking services who didn't use a non-judgemental approach. As stated by: ‘You should know how damaging smoking is when you are pregnant anyway. You do not need to be told that, but the way they ( the stop smoking practitioner) reiterate that information to you, I think they do that really, really well and in a dignified way, rather than coming out of an appointment feeling like a scumbag, you go out feeling like empowered that you are going to be able to do this because they have made you feel like you are not a bad person’.

Claire Allison
Nottingham Trent University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Smoking cessation in pregnancy: exploring service users' lived experiences, British Journal of Midwifery, July 2025, Mark Allen Group,
DOI: 10.12968/bjom.2024.0115.
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