Impacts of counseling on knowledge, attitude and practice of medication use during pregnancy

Abstract

BackgroundCounseling has a significant role in improving knowledge, attitude and practice outcomes of pregnant women towards medication use. Proper counseling thus could be beneficial to prevent any medication related misadventure during pregnancy. The present study was aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of pregnant women towards their medications, to provide counseling regarding their understanding of medication use during pregnancy and evaluate the impacts of such counseling.MethodsPre- post interventional (counseling) study was conducted at Manipal Teaching Hospital, Nepal among pregnant women who presented with complication and were prescribed at least one medication. A total of 275 pregnant women were included in the study. A structured questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of pregnant women before and after counseling. The impacts of counseling were then evaluated using suitable statistical methods.ResultsOf the total participants 229 completed the post counseling survey. Majority of the participants were in the age group 20-24 (43.2%), primigravida (59.4%) and in third trimester (58.6%). Housewives comprised 61.1% of participants and majority had received a University degree (33.2%).The mean and median scores assessed before counseling showed that there was no significant difference in the KAP scores with respect to age, trimester and gravidity whereas KAP scores with respect to occupation and level of education were statistically significant. There was an increase in mean and median KAP scores after counseling and the impacts of counseling was found to be statistically significant (p = <0.001).ConclusionCounseling had a positive impact on knowledge, attitude and practice of pregnant women towards medication and thus it could be considered a suitable method to encourage safe medication during pregnancy.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1316-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Knowledge, attitudes, and practice regarding medication use in pregnant women in Southern Italy

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Effect of focused birth preparedness and complication readiness counseling on pregnancy outcome among females attending tertiary care hospital in Barabanki district, Uttar Pradesh, India

“…[ 26 ] This finding of our study further reinforces the known fact that focused and structured counseling has positive impact on knowledge and attitude of pregnant females to incorporate desirable practices during pregnancy. [ 27 ] In our study, unfavorable pregnancy outcome like abortion was found to be comparatively much higher among the pregnant females who had suboptimal BPCR index even after the counseling. This reflects the importance of BPCR to have favorable birth outcome that has been reported in previous studies too.…”