• Sarita Sonalkar, Veronica Chavez, Jessica McClusky, Tegan A Hunter, and Cynthia J Mollen.
• Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts. Electronic address: sarita.sonalkar@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.
• Womens Health Issues. 2020 Mar 1; 30 (2): 136-141.

BackgroundWomen with physical disabilities have unmet gynecologic care needs, including disparities in cancer screening and contraceptive care, when compared with women without physical disabilities. Our objective was to qualitatively assess provider and patient perspectives regarding barriers to gynecologic health care for women with physical disabilities.MethodsWe used purposive sampling to recruit women with physical disabilities and gynecology providers who had experience caring for this population at two university hospitals. Patient and provider participants completed in-depth, semistructured interviews investigating their experiences with and barriers to receiving or providing gynecologic care. Transcripts were systematically analyzed by reviewing assigned codes and performing thematic analysis. We planned a sample size of at least 20 patient and provider participants to allow for saturation of thematic content.ResultsWe interviewed 29 women with physical disabilities and 20 providers. Important themes for providers and patients centered around adequate time spent during appointments, challenges with the gynecologic examination, inadequate facilities, clinical space limitations, and lack of formal provider and staff training in caring for this population.ConclusionsProviders were motivated to provide quality care for women with disabilities, but encountered systems and training barriers. Patients and providers had concordant impressions of barriers that influenced equitable and patient-centered care, with structural barriers, including a lack of accessible space, closely related to perceptions of health care inequity between women with and without physical disabilities.Copyright © 2019 Jacobs Institute of Women's Health. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

16 keywords...

hide…