Changing birth places to care for healthcare workers, lessons from the pandemic: a scoping review.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p> <p><strong>Background:</strong> Together with women giving birth, healthcare professionals involved in perinatal care faced significant challenges due to Covid-19 restrictions. The birth environment has been affected, influencing the quality and nature of interactions between care providers, women, and their families as well as the quality of care provided to women.</p> <p><strong>Aim:</strong> To identify, categorize and reflect on the most relevant aspects of the experience of healthcare workers, especially obstetricians and gynecologists, involved in the peripartum period, after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic up till now.</p> <p><strong>Methods:</strong> A scoping review was conducted. After conducting a literature search using a variety of online data- bases, 22 articles were included, and the main/recurrent themes were identified.</p> <p><strong>Results: </strong>The following main themes were described: fear of the virus, changes in the way care is provided, increase in the workload, mental health, psychological distress, support strategies, university education, and perspectives of health managers.</p> <p><strong>Discussion:</strong> Standard maternity departments appeared not appropriate to face the pandemic. Psychological distress on perinatal healthcare workers&rsquo;, the majority of whom were women, led to the impairment of their mental health, affecting the quality of care provided to women.&nbsp; A key role was played by healthcare managers support in shaping how doctors can cope and recover, and in reducing the mental health impact.</p> <p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> It is very important to address some of the most relevant issues to acknowledge the role of healthcare workers and improve the health systems organization to face future pandemics.</p>