Abstract:
Back ground: - Labor pain is the most severe form of pain in women life. Delivery of the infant into the arms of a conscious and pain-free mother is the most exciting and rewarding moment in maternal care services. But since it was regarded as a punishment given by God, labour pain relief was considered as against God‟s wish. So that no one gives attention to this intolerable life event. Developed countries use obstetric analgesia routinely but in developing countries including Ethiopia it is not a common practice.
Objective: - To assess utilization of obstetric analgesia in labor pain management and associated factors among obstetric care givers.
Method: - Institution based cross sectional study was conducted in Amhara regional state referral hospitals from July 1-15/2014. Two hundred twelve obstetric care givers were included in the study. Data was collected by using self-administered, pre-tested and structured questionnaires. Then it was coded, entered and cleaned in EpiInfo and exported to SPSS for further analysis. Descriptive analysis was done, logistic regression analyses were also used to see the association of dependent and independent variables. Finally Odds ratio and 95% Confidence interval were computed to determine the strength of association.
Result: - This study revealed that the overall utilization of obstetric analgesia in labour pain management was 40.1% which showed only non-pharmacologic methods. The utilization of pharmacologic obstetric analgesia methods was zero. Multivariate logistic regression showed that professionals with low level qualification (AOR=2.69, 95%CI: 1.13, 6.41) and inadequate knowledge (AOR=2.57, 95%CI: 1.42, 4.65) were statistically associated with utilization of obstetric analgesia.
Conclusion and recommendation: Proportion of obstetric analgesia utilization was very low; highest qualification and inadequate knowledge were significantly associated with obstetric analgesia utilization. Providers need to help labouring mother with analgesia; update and make themselves familiar with obstetric analgesia. The quality and associated factors of obstetric analgesia utilization need to be investigated.
