4^th International Conference on Nursing & Healthcare October 05-07, 2015 San Francisco, USA

Zogopoulos Panagiotis is a resident of Neurosurgery at the General Hospital of Nikaia-Piraeus “Agios Panteleimon”, Athens, Greece. He has received a 6-month advanced clinical training (clinical fellow) at the Neurosurgery Department of Osaka University Hospital in Japan. Several of his papers have been published in reputed peer-review journals and he has presented various researches in international conferences.

According to current legislation in Greece the nursingrnstaff in hospitals works in 3 consecutive 8-hour shifts.rnIn previous years, morning shifts at public hospitalsrnwere staffed by 4-6 nurses, while the afternoon shift byrn3-4 and the night shift by 2-3 nurses, according to thernnature and severity of cases at the various departments.
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Over the last years, due to the economic crisis that hasrnoccurred in Greece, there have been major budget cutsrnregarding employment of new nursing staff. This hasrnled to a dramatic decrease on the number of nursesrnworking at each shift, thus making the performance ofrntheir duties extremely difficult.
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In particular, the morning shift nowadays is comprisedrnof 2-4 nurses, while the afternoon and night shifts byrnonly one nurse. This leads not only to the exhaustionrnof the already understaffed nursing personnel, but alsornto higher risks regarding patients’ hospitalization. It isrntherefore imperative that, despite the serious economicrnproblems of the country, the budget of public hospitalsrnis increased in order to cover the needs of nursing staffrnemployment.

Dr. Kyoung-Eun Lee is currently an assistant professor at Ewah Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. She earned her BSN from Korea University in South Korea, MSN from University of Minnesota in Twin cities and Ph.D. from University of Washington in Seattle in the U.S. Her research areas have been immigrant women’s health, transcultural studies, qualitative inquiries, immigrant women’s health promotion, and health disparity. She has been dedicated to promote local Korean immigrants’ health in the U.S. as a Women’s health nurse practitioner and the director of North Texas Korean Nurse Association.

BACKGROUND: The trend of recent global migration has highlighted the importance of cultural awareness among health care providers because acknowledging cultural difference and its impacts on immigrant women’s out-of-culture childbirth experience is particularly crucial in obstetrical care settings.
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OBJECTIVE: To explore the lived experience of Korean first-time immigrant mothers giving birth in the United States from their own perspectives.
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DESIGN: Hermeneutic phenomenological study using semi-structured interviews with seven Korean first-time mothers who recently gave birth in the United States. The interview data were analyzed to identify emerging themes, which were centered on both positive and negative perceptions of the experience.
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RESULTS: The emerged positive perceptions included friendly health care providers, husband’s active involvement, strengthened bonding with husband, freedom from traditional rituals and taboos, and giving the baby a U.S. citizenship. Difficulty in making medical decisions, health literacy, a different health system, different postpartum food culture, and lack of support system were identified as negative perceptions.
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CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study may help health care providers in obstetrical settings better understand the meaningful aspects of childbirth experienced by Korean immigrant first-time mothers while they gave birth and received perinatal care in the U.S. sociocultural context. Immigrants’ childbirth experience in a foreign country has multidimensional aspects that suggest further research on their perinatal health needs evolving from a different health culture, culturally embedded health practices, and lack of support system.
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KEYWORDS: Korean immigrant mothers; childbirth experience; phenomenology; culturally congruent perinatal carern