The holistic maternity care needs of women with gestational diabetes mellitus: a systematic review with thematic synthesis
Open accessAbstract
PROBLEM: Models of care for women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) have evolved in an ad hoc way and do not meet women's needs. BACKGROUND: GDM affects 50,000 Australian women per annum with prevalence quadrupling in the last ten years. Many health services are struggling to provide a quality service. People with diabetes are calling for care that focuses on their wellbeing more broadly. AIM: To examine the holistic (emotional, social, economic, and spiritual) care needs of women with GDM. METHODS: Qualitative and mixed-methods studies capturing the healthcare experiences of women with GDM were searched for in CINAHL, Medline, Web of Science and Scopus. English-language studies published between 2011 and 2023 were included. Quality of studies was assessed using Crowe Critical Appraisal Tool and NVIVO was used to identify key themes and synthesise data. FINDINGS: Twenty-eight studies were included, representing the experiences of 958 women. Five themes reflect women's holistic needs through their journey from initial diagnosis to postpartum: psychological impact, information and education, making change for better health, support, and care transition. DISCUSSION: The biomedical, fetal-centric model of care neglects the woman's holistic wellbeing resulting in high levels of unmet need. Discontinuity between tertiary and primary services results in a missed opportunity to assist women to make longer term changes that would benefit themselves (and their families) into the future. CONCLUSIONS: The provision of holistic models of care for this cohort is pivotal to improving clinical outcomes and the experiences of women with GDM.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus may substantially affect women's psychological wellbeing.
“A diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus may substantially affect women's psychological wellbeing. 36 , 37 , 38”
Cites
Beyond PICO: The SPIDER Tool for Qualitative Evidence Synthesis
Cooke, A., Smith, D., & Booth, A. (2012) · Qualitative Health Research · doi:10.1177/1049732312452938 · Cited by 2,608 · see citing works
Damm, P., Houshmand-Oeregaard, A., Kelstrup, L., Lauenborg, J., Mathiesen, E. R., & Clausen, T. D. (2016) · Diabetologia · doi:10.1007/s00125-016-3985-5 · Cited by 620 · see citing works
Dineen-Griffin, S., Garcia-Cardenas, V., Williams, K., & Benrimoj, S. I. (2019) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0220116 · Cited by 600 · see citing works
Lowe, W. L., Scholtens, D. M., Kuang, A., Linder, B., Lawrence, J. M., Lebenthal, Y., McCance, D., Hamilton, J., Nodzenski, M., Talbot, O., et al. (2019) · Diabetes Care · doi:10.2337/dc18-1646 · Cited by 574 · see citing works
Lee, K. W., Ching, S. M., Ramachandran, V., Yee, A., Hoo, F. K., Chia, Y. C., Wan Sulaiman, W. A., Suppiah, S., Mohamed, M. H., & Veettil, S. K. (2018) · BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth · doi:10.1186/s12884-018-2131-4 · Cited by 546 · see citing works
Muhwava, L. S., Murphy, K., Zarowsky, C., & Levitt, N. (2019) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0225431 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Brassel, A., Townsend, M. L., Pickard, J. A., & Grenyer, B. F. S. (2020) · Infant Mental Health Journal · doi:10.1002/imhj.21827 · Cited by 59 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Sweeting, A., Hare, M. J., de Jersey, S. J., Shub, A. L., Zinga, J., Foged, C., Hall, R. M., Wong, T., & Simmons, D. (2025) · Medical Journal of Australia · doi:10.5694/mja2.52696 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
- Authors
- Davis, D., Kurz, E., Hooper, M.-E., Atchan, M., Spiller, S., Blackburn, J., Bushell, M., Lewis, V., Leung, M., Samarawickrema, I., & Knight-Agarwal, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Canberra (AU)
- American Health Care Association (US)
- Corresponding author
- Davis, Deborah
- ORCID
- Venue
- Women and Birth
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2024-02
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 166-176
- ISSN
- 1871-5192 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4386484096
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 6
- FWCI
- 1.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Women and Birth (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Obstetrics and Gynecology › Gestational Diabetes Research and Management
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes Management and Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Maternal and Neonatal Healthcare
- Keywords
- gestational diabetes mellitus, psychological impact, patient education, social support, care transitions, continuity of care, spiritual well-being, emotional well-being, economic well-being, models of care, postpartum care
- MeSH terms
- Australia, Female, Humans, Maternal Health Services, Pregnancy, Prenatal Care, Diabetes, Gestational, Qualitative Research
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
