Treat Me But Don't Judge Me: A Qualitative Examination of Health Care Experiences of Pregnant and Parenting Youth.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To share pregnant and parenting youth's experiences with health care to inform recommendations for promoting youth-friendly medical encounters. DESIGN: This exploratory study used a qualitative descriptive approach. SETTING: Three urban centers that service pregnant youth and young parents in a large Canadian city. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 26 participants (mean age of 18.7 years) was recruited across sites. INTERVENTIONS: Five focus groups were conducted. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Focus groups were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed thematically. Analysis involved the independent, open coding of data by 2 qualitative researchers to identify and compare emerging themes. RESULTS: Three major themes emerged regarding their experiences with health care providers: characteristics of negative health care encounters, the emergence of contemporary stereotypes during these encounters, and characteristics of positive health care encounters. Negative encounters often resulted from perceived judgmental attitudes of providers and were shown to contribute to a general sense of mistrust and fear. Positive health care encounters tended to feature mutual respect, support, open dialogue, and nonjudgmental attitudes. CONCLUSION: Pregnant and parenting youth in our study have experienced many negative health care encounters that have contributed to disengagement and mistrust of the health care system. To engage this high-risk population in health care, practitioners are encouraged to consider their own biases when servicing this population and work toward fostering positive, nonjudgmental interactions, and supportive environments.

But We're Not Like the People on TV: A Qualitative Examination of How Media Messages are Perceived by Pregnant and Parenting Youth.

OBJECTIVES: The media has long been established as influential in the formation of youth attitudes. It remains unknown, however, whether popular media depictions of teenage pregnancy and motherhood shape the meanings pregnant and parenting youth (PPY) construct. This study explored PPY's perceptions of media messages portraying PPY. METHODS: Five focus groups were conducted at three urban centres that service pregnant youth and young parents. Convenience sample of 26 participants was recruited across sites. Focus groups were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically. RESULTS: Participants were a mean age of 18.7 years. Participants felt that the storylines in television reality programs featuring PPY were highly incongruent with their lived experiences and that these representations glamorized teenage pregnancy while failing to capture other realities, such as financial hardship. Further, it was felt that such representations informed public opinion and created a double standard for teen parents. Participants felt that healthcare providers were not immune to media messaging; some participants reported withdrawing socially and others delayed accessing health services because of what they perceived as negative media-fuelled public views. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the need for heightened awareness of the influence of popular media on the portrayal of PPY. Acknowledging and challenging stereotypes of teen pregnancy, as well as initiating dialogue with youth about the impact media has on their lives should be encouraged as a means of facilitating ongoing engagement with health care services.

Feelings of regret following uncommitted sexual encounters in Canadian university students.

In this study we explored the prevalence of regret following uncommitted sexual encounters (i.e., casual sex that occurs with someone once and only once or with someone known for less than 24 hours) among 138 female and 62 male Canadian university students, who were approximately 21 years of age. The majority of participants self-reported that they had experienced feelings of regret after an uncommitted sexual encounter. We found women reported feeling significantly more regret than men. However, men's regret was more closely tied to physical attributes than women's regrets. Regret was also influenced by the quality of the sex: high-quality sex rarely led to regret, while the reverse was true for poor-quality sex. In keeping with past studies, intoxication by alcohol and/or drugs was often listed as a source of regret by both men and women.