PCMC (Person Centered Maternity Care)
Unacceptably high maternal mortality remains a challenge in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While clinical aspects of care are a primary focus in efforts to reduce high mortality rates, evidence demonstrates that person-centered maternity care (PCMC) also plays a vital role in reducing maternal mortality, newborn complications, and low rates of facility-based deliveries. To ensure high-quality care is provided, it is crucial that providers and funders of maternity services clearly understand if clients are receiving PCMC. However, in many LMICs, the quality of care remains unclear.
Improving Outcomes:
Measuring the Quality of Maternal Care
The 13-item PCMC scale, adopted in the USAID Service Provision Assessment Surveys (SPA Surveys), provides insight on dignity, respect, communication, autonomy, and emotional support. This adoption underscores the global importance of PCMC and demonstrates the value of our reduced scale. The selection of the 13-item scale was deliberate—it is not only effective but also shorter, making it easier for people to use and add to these already lengthy surveys. In other words, we’re setting global standards.
The short PCMC scale was derived from a 30-item scale, variations of which were tested in India, Kenya, and Ghana. The scale items were refined and validated with input from both maternal and child health experts and postpartum women in rural and urban settings, and then reduced to identify those which were most generalizable. The resulting 13-item PCMC scale has been shown to have high reliability as well as high content, construct, and criterion validity.
A Simple Scale For Reliable, Sustainable Assessment
The PCMC scale requires minimal training to use and is scored according to an easy-to-use rubric. Results can be used to create an average PCMC score by facility, method type, delivery type, and/or provider type. Guidance for implementing the PCMC scale reinforces the principles of respectful and dignified engagement, encouraging security and transparency even when used in the facility where care was received.
Who should use the PCMC scale?
- Quality improvement personnel
- Maternal health researchers
- Hospital/clinic staff
- Health providers
- Ministries of Health
- Departments of Health
Resources
LEARN MORE
Contact us to learn how Metrics for Management can help you use targeted, accurate and measurable data to expand and improve your services.
