A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study to assess the Practice of Home Visiting by Axillary Nurse & Midwife (ANM) as a Primary Healthcare Intervention in a rural area of Aligarh, Utter Pradesh.

Abstract

Home visit is an integral component of PHC delivery system. It is preventive and promotes health practice where health professionals render care to clients in their own environment and provide appropriate healthcare needs and social support services. This study describes the home visit practices in a rural area of Aligarh in the UP. Methodology. This descriptive cross-sectional study used 375 households and 11 ANM’s in the Aligarh district. Multistage sampling techniques were used to select 10 communities and study respondents using probability sampling methods. A pretested self- designed questionnaire and an interview guide for household members and community health nurses, respectively, were used for data collection. Quantitative data collected were coded, cleaned, and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences into descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were analyzed using the NVivo software. Thematic analysis was engaged that embraces three interrelated stages, namely, data reduction, data display, and data conclusion. Results. Home visit is a routine responsibility of all ANMs. The factors that influence home visiting were community members’ education and attitude, supervision challenges, lack of incentives and lack of basic logistics, uncooperative attitude, community inaccessibility, financial constraint, and limited number of staff. Household members (62.3%) indicated that health workers did not had attend to minor ailments as 78% benefited from the service and wished more activities could be conducted to the home visiting package (24.5%). Conclusion. There should be tailored training of ANMs on home visits skills so that they could expand the scope of services that can be provided. Also, community-based health workers such as community health volunteers, birth attendants, and community clinic attendants can also be trained to identify and Address health problems in the homes.