Find in Library

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 <25%, i.e., 93 of the respondents (24.2%) had moderate level of knowledge regarding the practice. 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.