| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北護理健康大學 === 護理助產研究所 === 103 === Background: The antenatal period presents important opportunities for reaching pregnant women with a number of interventions that may be vital to their health and well-being and that of their infants. Better understanding of fetal growth and development and its relationship to the mother’s health can result in an increased attention to the potential of antenatal care as an intervention to improve both maternal and newborn health. Every woman and her newborn have the right to quality care during pregnancy, childbirth and after birth, which implies access to competent health professionals such as nurses and midwives for all. In all countries that have achieved a dramatic decrease in maternal and newborn death, well-trained health professionals have been a key to success. Therefore, as nurses and midwives are among the key providers of RCH services across the country (Ministry of Health & Social Welfare Banjul), it would be crucial to explore their perception about focused antenatal care, as an intervention adopted by ministry of health to help in addressing the health needs of the pregnant women, newborns and the postpartum mothers.
Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explore perception of nurses and midwives about (FANC) in the Upper River Region of the Gambia.
Methods: In this study, a cross sectional with descriptive survey method was used to collected data using self-administered structured questionnaires to explore the perception of nurses and midwives about focused antenatal care between July and September (2014). A convenient sampling method was used to collect data from all the nurses and midwives who provide antenatal care services and also meet the study inclusion criteria in the 10 health centers and 4 clinics. The data analysis was done using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 18.0. Variables were described using frequency distribution for categorical variables and mean and standard deviation for continuous variables. Independent t-test and one-way ANOVA was used to assess the association between demographic and perception of nurses and midwives, Pearson r correlation to determine the relationship between continuous variable. Finally, multiple linear regression analysis was done to determine the factors predicting perception of FANC among the nurses and midwives.
Overall, nurses and midwives have positive perception about FANC (P=.026). Although, nurses and midwives have shown positive perception about FANC, it was also observed that midwives had better perception of FANC than the nurses. There also exists gender and regional distinctions, with female nurses and midwives manifesting better FANC perception (P=.022), while the south bank provides more health education (P=.021) to pregnant women than the north bank. Nurses and midwives who were trained in FANC approach demonstrated better knowledge over those who were not trained (P=.001). However, those who had below college standard of education had better knowledge of FANC (P=.019) over those who had above college standard of education.
Implication for practice: The essential elements of a focused approach to antenatal care are surveillance, early identification and management of pregnancy related complications. In order to enhance FANC perception and service delivery within the region, there is need to address the gaps in training of staff, posting of trained staff and to strengthen routine supervision to all service delivery points.
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