Impact of video demonstration on willingness of pregnant women to receive epidural labor analgesia in a Nigerian hospital- An open label trial

Abstract

Background: Labor pain is an inevitable experience for parturients with choice for labor analgesia depending on awareness, parturients' education, availability, cost and adverse effects of the analgesic materials. Methods: All pregnant women attending booking clinics in the obstetric units of our hospital were recruited into an open-label randomized control trial for a period of 3 months into either intervention or control group. The pregnant women in the intervention group were shown a video demonstration on epidural labor analgesia in addition to distribution of epidural information leaflets with verbal explanation on pain management in labour. The control group had the same exposure except the video demonstration. An interviewer semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect information on biodata, knowledge of pain management in labor, previous labor pain experience, willingness to receive epidural labor analgesia in the current pregnancy and factors associated with willingness to receive epidural labor analgesia. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with P < 0.05 accepted as statistically significant. Results: Out of the 199 expectant mothers that participated in the study, 95 (47.7%) were in the intervention group and 104 (52.3%) in the control group with 18 (18.9%) and 5 (4.8%) patients had prior knowledge of epidural labor analgesia respectively. A higher proportion of 41 (43.2%) of participants in the intervention group were willing to receive epidural analgesia in the current pregnancy, when compared with 13 (12.5%) in the control group (P = 0.001). Conclusion: Addition of video demonstration to epidural leaflet information with verbal explanation in the intervention group increased the willingness of pregnant women to request for epidural pain relief in the current pregnancy compared to the control group.