Canadian Midwives’ Experiences with Nutrition in Their Training and Practice: A Cross‐Sectional Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Midwives are primary prenatal care providers well‐positioned to offer nutrition advice to pregnant individuals; however, no Canadian study has assessed midwives’ experience with nutrition education. The objective of this study was to investigate Canadian midwives’ experiences with nutrition in their practice, their level of nutrition education, and their recommendations on select nutrition topics. Methods This cross‐sectional study used an anonymous online survey consisting of 4 sections: demographics, opinions on the importance of nutrition, nutrition recommendations for pregnancy, and nutrition topics that midwives would like more information on. Responses were recorded using Likert‐type scales, multiple choice, or open‐ended questions. Eligible participants, registered Canadian midwives, were recruited through advertisements in e‐newsletters via national and provincial midwifery associations, social media posts, and emails to midwifery clinics. An independent samples t test compared differences in means for continuous outcomes, the χ 2 test compared categorical variables, and the Mann‐Whitney U test compared ordinal variables. A P < .05 was considered statistically significant. Results In total, 161 midwives completed the online survey. Most midwives (92.5%) indicated that nutrition for pregnancy was important, and 83.2% believed their role in providing nutrition information to pregnant women was important. Almost two‐thirds (63.8%) of midwives received nutrition education. Comfort levels were highest (median = 4) when providing nutrition advice on healthy eating, weight gain, Listeria, anemia, heartburn, safe food handling, nutrition for breastfeeding, and weight gain for women with obesity. Almost all the midwives (99.4%) had provided nutrition information to pregnant women, and 85.2% of their recommendations aligned with Canadian guidelines and literature. Discussion Canadian midwives valued the importance of nutrition during pregnancy and their role in providing nutrition information to pregnant women. The level of comfort in advising on nutrition ranged from uncomfortable to very comfortable depending on the topic, and most (85.2%) of their advice aligned with Canadian guidelines and relevant literature.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".