What’s Important in Maternal and Infant Integrated Healthcare? Identifying Relevant Learning Contents for Medical Students through a Delphi Study

Background: Maternal and infant health is one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals and this leads to the importance of equipping undergraduate medical students with the knowledge, skills and behaviour to manage problems related to maternal and infant health. In order to identify the most important learning content related to maternal and infant health, a Delphi technique was employed due to its ability to obtain independent responses from a panel of experts.

Methods: The expert panel consisted of primary care physicians, obstetric-gynaecologists and paediatricians who were considered to have the most appropriate knowledge and experience in the field of study. The members of the panel were asked to answer a question and complete a questionnaire in subsequent rounds of the Delphi technique.

Results: The Delphi’s first round resulted in 1869 learning topics, which were then categorized and submitted for the second round. In the second round, the respondents determined the level of importance for each learning component and consensus was achieved by having a list of 19 most important learning contents in maternal and infant health in rank order.

Conclusions: The consensus was produced based on perceptions of experts from different fields who work in different healthcare settings. The identification of relevant learning contents for undergraduate medical students, related to maternal and infant health, is influential in designing a curriculum that can fulfil society’s needs.