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Purpose: Little is known about the barriers and facilitators to pregnancy, birth and motherhood for disabled women within the New Zealand context. Our study explored this deficit with the aim of improving health care interventions and support for disabled mothers. Methods: This paper reports on the third phase of a mixed-methods study. The first two phases used semi-structured individual and focus group interviews with disabled women, and health professionals, involved in maternity and postnatal care and has been reported elsewhere. Phase 3 utilised a modified Delphi technique with both groups of participants to seek consensus on the prioritisation of recommendations from the study. This article focuses on the disabled women's recommendations. Results: In all, 20 disabled women took part in the Delphi phase of the study (28% of the cohort from Phase 1). In total, 11 key recommendations were identified by the disabled women, with the top seven discussed in detail here. Conclusions: Health professionals and health systems could, and arguably should, utilise a matrix of these recommendations to facilitate a review of service responsiveness to disabled women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Qualitative research examining experiences of recovering from mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) is limited. Findings from quantitative studies regarding predictors of persisting symptoms are inconsistent with limited attention directed to capturing broad perspectives and priorities of the wider stakeholders. More flexible research approaches may help advance the field. We used a mixed method design to generate patient perspectives of MTBI recovery, integrating these with quantitative investigation to isolate factors that might contribute to divergent MTBI outcomes. Methods: The qualitative component reported here involved semi-structured interviews with selected participants (n = 10) from the quantitative study cohort, sampling both recovered and non-recovered adult MTBI participants. Interviews focused on participants' general description and understandings of their recovery and perceptions of what helped or hindered this. Data were analyzed using general thematic analysis. Results and conclusion: Participants regardless of recovery status identified the importance of having a coherent understanding of their injury and recovery. Factors facilitating coherence included social support, validation, reassurance, accessing credible evidence-based information and having a pathway to wellness. Findings suggested that coherence could be a helpful umbrella construct worthy of examination in future MTBI research. This construct appears broad and able to cope with the complexity of individual experiences after injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]