MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr Lucy Halliday
School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Socioeconomic deprivation is associated with adverse maternal and childhood outcomes. Epidural analgesia is the gold standard for labour analgesia, and is associated with improved maternal pain scores and satisfaction, reduced rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and postnatal depression and may reduce severe maternal morbidity. Scotland is a country with a fully publicly funded national health service that aims to provide equitable treatment that is free at the point of care. We wanted to look at the association between socioeconomic deprivation and utilisation of labour epidural analgesia.