Expanding Our Understanding of Birth Doulas’ Emotional and Informational Support Role: A Qualitative Analysis of Interventions Delivered During COVID-19

Abstract

Birth doulas were classified as nonessential personnel during COVID-19 and generally excluded from providing physical, in-hospital birth support. This amplified their emotional and informational support to clients, offering a unique opportunity to examine psychological mechanisms underlying birth doulas’ impact on perinatal outcomes. We conducted a methodologically rigorous qualitative case study leveraging a social action theory framework and interviewed 15 demographically diverse birth doulas. Doulas played an important role in supporting their clients’ psychological change processes (e.g., problem solving, outcome expectancies, self-efficacy, goal structures, cognitive schemas). This study contributes to our understanding of psychosocial interventions that may drive the positive effects of doula care on health outcomes, both within and beyond the pandemic context.

Keywords:

• Birth doula
• emotional support
• childbirth
• social action theory
• COVID-19

Acknowledgments

We thank Jordan Carelock for serving as a second coder for data analysis and Jamia Geddie for her assistance with transcription.

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Interdisciplinary Health Psychology PhD Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.