A cross-sectional study on knowledge and practices regarding birth preparedness and complication readiness among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at KLE'S Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and Medical Research Center, Belagavi

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The objective is to assess the level of knowledge and practices regarding birth preparedness and complication readiness (BP and CR) among pregnant women. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was carried out in 2400-bedded tertiary care teaching hospital, Belagavi, over a period of 3 months from September to November 2017. A total of 384 pregnant women attending the antenatal clinic at the tertiary care teaching hospital were included in the study by purposive sampling. A descriptive approach was adopted, including collection of information from the pregnant women through a pretested and structured interview questionnaire and the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. RESULTS: In this study among 384 pregnant women, there were 233 (60.7%) of respondents primigravida, nearly half of the pregnant women, i.e., 191 (49.7%) were between the age of 15 and 20 years, the majority of the women, i.e., 272 (70.8%) had visited the antenatal clinic around 5–10 times. Two hundred and forty-five (63.8%) of the respondents had their secondary education, the majority of women 278 (72.4%) belonged to rural area. In the level of knowledge about BP and CR, majority of the respondents, i.e., 296 (77.1%) had moderate level of knowledge and 66 (17.2%) women had poor level of knowledge and only 22 of the women (5.7%) had good level of knowledge. In the level of practice about BP and CR, there were 291 (75.8%) had a thorough awareness about the practices and CONCLUSION: The present study concluded that three-fourth pregnant women attending antenatal clinic in a tertiary care teaching hospital had average knowledge regarding BP and CR was found to be average (77.1%), whereas in practice, three-fourth of them had good practice (75.8%). Hence, there is a need to retrain health-care workers about BP and CR to educate women in early pregnancy.