Thank you for your interest in this study. Before you decide whether or not to take part, it is important that you understand more about the study, including what your participation would involve. Please read this information, feel free to discuss with other people if you would like to, and contact us for more information if required. Contact details are below.
Please note: where the term ‘woman’ or ‘women’ is used, it should be taken to include any person who has given birth, including those who do not identify as women.
What is this study about?
As you may know, following the change in the GP contract in 2020, all women in England should be offered a dedicated appointment to review their own health in their GP practice around 6-8 weeks after birth. This study is researching what GPs do in these appointments, whether they think there are improvements that could be made and what they feel they may need to be able to improve the quality of the consultation. A GP, Dr Clare Macdonald is leading this research as part of her PhD at the University of Birmingham.
Why am I suitable?
We are asking GPs in England to take part by completing a questionnaire. This can include GP speciality trainees who are in their third year (GPST3s). You must be registered with the GMC with a licence to practise to participate. It doesn’t matter whether you have an interest in postnatal or maternity care, or what your prior experience is; it is important that we hear the views of a broad range of GPs.
What will be involved?
If you decide to take part, we would like you to complete a one-off online questionnaire which takes around 10 minutes to complete, depending on the level of detail you decide to include.
We will ask you to give your consent to taking part by confirming that you have read and understood this information before proceeding to the questionnaire. The questionnaire asks for some basic information about you, for example, how long you have been a GP. This information is not compulsory but will be very helpful to best understand the findings from the study. The rest of the questionnaire contains questions about how you, or the practice you work at conduct the 6-8 week maternal postnatal check.
After you have completed the questionnaire, we will not contact you again, unless you have entered the prize draw and you win. In this case, we will contact you with your prize, but will not contact you again after that.
Can I change my mind?
It is your own choice whether or not to take part in this study, and you are very welcome to contact Clare Macdonald (details below) if you have any questions that are not answered here. You can stop being part of the study at any time, without giving a reason, but after you have completed the questionnaire, we will not be able to remove your answers from the data., Your answers will be anonymous and not linked to you. We need to manage your records in specific ways for the research to be reliable. This means that we won’t be able to let you see or change the data we hold about you.
Are there any risks to me?
There are no specific risks expected as a result of taking part in the study.
Are there any benefits for me?
There are no specific benefits to you, but we anticipate that it will benefit care for postnatal patients in the future.
Will I be reimbursed for my time?
We are not able to reimburse you for your time, but on completion of the questionnaire, you will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher. If you prefer not to be entered in this, you will be able to opt-out when you complete the questionnaire.
What will happen to my personal information?
We will need to use information from you for this research project.
This information will include your initials, name, contact details and information from the questionnaire. People will use this information to do the research or to check your records to make sure that the research is being done properly.
People who do not need to know who you are will not be able to see your name or contact details. Your data will have a code number instead.
We will keep all information about you safe and secure.
Once we have finished the study, we will keep some of the data so we can check the results. We will write our reports in a way that no-one can work out that you took part in the study.
Your information will be kept strictly confidential, only accessible to members of the research team and kept in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. The questionnaire is hosted at onlinesurveys.ac.uk which is fully compliant with UK data protection law. Your email address will be the only identifiable information we have, and this will be kept separate from the answers to the questionnaire so that your answers are not directly attributable to you. Written data will be kept in line with University of Birmingham policy which requires secure storage of research data for 10 years. If quotes from your responses are used in a report or publication, these will be anonymised.
Where can you find out more about how your information is used?
You can find out more about how we use your information
- by asking one of the research team
- by sending an email to dataprotection@contacts.bham.ac.uk
What will happen after the questionnaire?
We will analyse the responses from all the discussions to build up a picture of what GPs’ views and experiences are of providing postnatal care and any ways they think it could or should be improved. The results will be written up in a report that will be available to all participants via the study website (URL HERE). We will also publish findings from the study in medical journals or at conferences. The details of the study, including the findings will be written up as part of Clare Macdonald’s PhD thesis.
Who is funding this research?
This study is sponsored and insured by the University of Birmingham as part of Clare Macdonald’s PhD programme, which is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) West Midlands Applied Research Collaboration. Clare’s PhD is supervised by Dr Beck Taylor, Professor Christine MacArthur and Professor Debra Bick.
Where can I find out about something not covered in this information leaflet?
If you have any questions about the study, or would like to find out more before deciding whether to take part, please contact Clare Macdonald by email postnatalGPcheck@contacts.bham.ac.uk
Clare’s PhD supervisors can be contacted via r.taylor.3@bham.ac.uk .
If you have any questions about what happens to your data at University of Birmingham, please visit https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/privacy/index.aspx