Introduction: The postpartum period is very demanding for every woman. A significant type of nursing support for women after giving birth is nursing community care. Currently, this type of care is not available to all women in the Czech Republic. Goal: Our goal is to find out whether and how the provided community care affects the quality of life of women after giving birth and their health condition, and to present the factors that affect the use of community nursing care provided by midwives to women after giving birth. We also aimed to present comparative results of the health condition of women after giving birth and the status of lactation at the end of puerperium regarding the used or unused services of a community midwife. Methods: We used the standardized Mother-Generated Index (MGI) questionnaire. We supplemented it with our proper sociodemographic questions. The MGI is a mixed method questionnaire (quantitative and qualitative methodology) with individualistic elements. The sample group included 122 women after giving birth. It was divided into two groups (women who used community nursing care after giving birth (N = 54) and women who did not use the community nursing care (N = 68)). Results: The results did not show a significant relationship between the results of the health condition and lactation status of women after giving birth and the repeated community nursing care. This fact can be affected by the lack of standards for midwife community care. The qualitative analysis of the MGI questionnaire shows that the mentioned life areas that undergo most changes after giving birth can be used for a deeper understanding of postpartum changes in the life of new mothers. Conclusions: We recommend further researches that are focused on the continuous community care of midwives provided to women after giving birth. It is also necessary to support professional organizations to create unanimous standards in the community nursing care of midwives in the Czech Republic.

University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Institute of Nursing Midwifery and Emergency Care České Budějovice Czech Republic

University of West Bohemia Faculty of Health Care Studies Department of Nursing and Midwifery Pilsen Czech Republic

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