Women’s Motivation and Associated Factors for Herbal Medicine Use during Pregnancy and Childbirth: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: Herbal medicines use has prevailed over the past decades in both low-middle-income and high-income countries over the years. The use among women has increased with increased risks of ill-health. There is extensive literature on herbal medicine use among women in pre/pregnancy, labour, and the postpartum periods. Therefore, this study aimed to understand women鈥檚 purposes, experiences, and motivation for using herbal medicines during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum, and the experiences associated with the use. Methods: Four critical databases were predetermined and searched: CINAHL, Medline, Web of Science, and EMBASE. These databases were chosen for their comprehensiveness and relevance to the review aims. We considered peer-reviewed published articles from January 2000 to December 2018. We chose these databases because we found that they are dominant in the medical and healthcare-related literature. All references were pooled to Endnote reference ...