Health education compliance among pregnant women

Abstract

It has been publicized that pregnant women exhibit an increase in clinical signs and symptoms during the pregnancy period. Nurses have an essential role to help pregnant women in handling their self-care as independently as possible. Health education is a foundation of nursing interventions in prenatal care. The compliance of pregnant women to health instructions will facilitate the nursing management in being systemic, holistic and creative for experiencing a positive pregnancy outcome. But, despite all the best intentions and efforts on the part of the healthcare professionals, these products might not be achievable if the women are non-compliant. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the factors that affect health education compliance among pregnant women. A descriptive research design was undertaken. By convenient sampling, 238 pregnant women were selected at out-patients units in El Shatiby University Hospital, Alexandria, Egypt. A Health Education Compliance Questionnaire (HECQ) was developed and used to collect the necessary data of the study. Based on the analysis of the subjects’ responses, the results revealed that there were promoting and inhibiting factors regarding health education compliance as perceived by pregnant women. First, in relation to themselves, the enhancing factors were physical and psychological conditions, self-cooperation, and relationship with the health staff, whereas, the inhibiting factors were concentration and understanding, acceptance, and trust. Second, as regards social and economic factors, the promoting factors were friends and relatives, family relationships, and marital age, while the hindering factors were monthly income, family size and transportation. Moreover, study subjects ranked the satisfactory topics that they received and adhered pregnancy follow up took the first position and dangerous signs were the next. In conclusion, compliance to health education among pregnant women is a major health concern affecting almost all women in El Shatiby University Hospital. There are a lot of factors that may promote or inhibit health education compliance among these women. The major recommendation is that nurses as health educators must facilitate the educational process for pregnant women, family and society. Efforts and collaboration between all nursing disciplines in the field of health education should be established. As this may be crucial to improve health education compliance within pregnancy or other maternal condition. Future studies need to investigate on how to minimize the inhibiting factors and support the promoting ones.