Abstract
Background: The birth plan raises women’s knowledge, improves empowerment, and promotes childbirth outcomes. Aim of the study was to implement a birth plan and evaluate its effect on women childbirth outcomes and empowerment. Design: A quasi-experimental comparative design. Sampling: A purposive sample of 194 pregnant women was enrolled and equally allocated into two groups (the intervention group who engaged in a birth plan to receive planned care during childbirth, a control group who received routine hospital care) 97 women each. Setting: The study was conducted at the obstetrics outpatient clinic and in the delivery room of Benha University Hospital. Tools: four tools were used for data collection; A Structured Self-Administration Questionnaire, Birth plan fulfillment sheet, childbirth outcomes sheet, Childbirth related Empowerment Scale. Results: that there were highly significant difference in most items of designed birth plan care during 1st, 2nd and 3rd stage between control and study group (P ≤ 0.001) and there was a significant decrease in mean ± SD of 1st stage duration and the total duration of childbirth stages of the study group comparing to the control group (P ≤ 0.05). Before implementing the birth plan, there was no statistical significance difference between control and study group regarding childbirth-related empowerment scale as (p ˃ 0.05) while after implementation, there were highly statistically significant differences regarding most items of birth-related empowerment scale as (P ≤ 0.001). Conclusion: the birth plan has a higher implementation of designed childbirth care, a positive effect on maternal and fetal outcomes and there was a highly significant increase in the total women`s empowerment scores after implementing birth plan (p<0,001) compared to control group. Recommendation: Raising awareness of healthcare staff of the outpatient clinic, delivery ward to implement birth plan toward increasing childbirth empowerment.
Highlights
The creation of a birth plan is an increasingly common part of a woman’s antenatal childbirth preparation [1]
It is important for women to fully understand the provided intrapartum care if they want a childbirth with fewer interventions, prenatal education offered by most public hospitals is often a general program which does not aware pregnant women to the hospital protocol of care so it has negative effect on women empowerment toward
These findings were similar to those reported by (Hodnett, 2015) [23] in a study conducted in Egypt titled " Effect of implementing a birth plan on women s' childbirth experiences and maternal & neonatal outcomes " and revealed that there was no significant difference of the general characteristics of women among the intervention group and control group
Summary
The creation of a birth plan is an increasingly common part of a woman’s antenatal childbirth preparation [1]. The birth plan facilitates communication with health care staff, improves women’s empowerment, and promotes childbirth outcomes [6]. Results: that there were highly significant difference in most items of designed birth plan care during 1st, 2nd and 3rd stage between control and study group (P ≤ 0.001) and there was a significant decrease in mean ± SD of 1st stage duration and the total duration of childbirth stages of the study group comparing to the control group (P ≤ 0.05). Conclusion: the birth plan has a higher implementation of designed childbirth care, a positive effect on maternal and fetal outcomes and there was a highly significant increase in the total womens empowerment scores after implementing birth plan (p
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