Table 1.

Themes, major categories, subcategories and codes

Theme	Main category	Subcategory	Main codes
Patient-related	Knowledge ⁄ beliefs	True beliefs	-Delivery cares should be efficient to reduce the labor pain. - Both baby and mother should be healthy; baby and mother should not face problem. - During labor, patient should be cooperative; I know that I acted annoyingly, we should be cooperative. - For my next pregnancy I’d like to give birth naturally.
		False beliefs	-Delivery should be assisted by a specialist.
	Demographic features	Literacy	- Educated women aremore likelytohave acaesarean section.
	Emotions and coping style	Privacy	- During labor, anyone in the delivery unitcame by to examine. - It is not comforting that the specialist is a man.
		Respectfor patient	- I was satisfied with the prenatal care. -I didn’t like to get delivery care from medical students.
Illness-related	Stage ⁄ severity of illness	Pain	- I prefer cesarean because it is less painful, I suffered the pain but ultimately I underwent cesarean operation. - For delivery of my first child, I suffered less pain in a private hospital. - Examinations were painful and too many.
	Treatment & outcomes	Type of delivery	- Now the number of women who choose cesareansection is increasing. We do not know which delivery mode to choose. - Normal delivery cancausepelvicprolapse. - I wish I had cesarean section from the first; I’ll have cesarean section whenever it is needed.
	Prior experience:	Patient safety incidents	-During labor and before that Iwanted to know more. - Specialists did not provide the required instructions. - Though I delivered at a private hospital, I had catheter for 4 days which caused infection.
Health care professional-related& Task-related	Interactions with patients	Behavior	- Personnel should treat patients tactfully. - Personnel should behave more properly.
	HCP_s professional role	Monitoring&Training	- I was under control of both a specialist and a health center and both were the same. - It would be better if instructions were provided through media (Radio & TV). - Normal delivery is better but my physician warned me because I was too old and I had a narrow pelvis. - They should diagnose early so that patients can be provided with the required services sooner. - I was monitored by both my physician and the health center; yet the health center was more effective because of its instructions.
Health care setting - related	Health care setting	Financial aspects	- Private hospitals offer more facilities but they are expensive. - There are some private pregnancy and breastfeeding courses, but that I could not afford to attend them. - Generally the costs are high and we are not insured; we should pay a lot for each ultrasonography examination. - They should provide us with insurance coverage otherwise we cannot afford the costs.
		facilities	- Patients should get equal access to facilities. -Patients should refer to clinics and to centers providing prenatal cares in a timely manner. - I wish I got training in prenatal cares and knew more about delivery. - It’s so far away; There’s just one health center in our village; I had to come all the way to Shahroud to visit my physician. - When it snows, the roads are closed; since I had bleeding, they refused to hospitalize me even though I had travelled a long distance to the center. - I delivered at night, there was only one midwife to assist and she was too busy to handle all other patients. -Wedon’t know the centers that provide the instructions; specialists are reluctant to give information