A Randomized Control Trial to Assess the Efficacy of Dry Ginger Powder on Management of Nausea and Vomiting Among Antenatal Mothers Attending Selected Urban Health Centres of Belgaum, Karnataka – One Group Pretest Post Test Pre Experimental Study

"A Randomized Control Trial to assess the efficacy of dry ginger powder on management of nausea and vomiting among antenatal mothers attending selected Urban Health Centres of Belgaum, Karnataka". The objectives of the study were to: 1. To assess the severity of nausea and vomiting among experimental and control group of antenatal mothers using modified Rhodes index of Nausea and Vomiting. 2. To assess the efficacy of dry ginger powder in reduction of episodes of nausea and vomiting among antenatal mothers in experimental group as compared to control group. Methods: Ludwig Von Bertalanffy's General System Theory was used as a conceptual framework for this study. The hypothesis formulated for the study was: H1: The mean post test scores of antenatal mothers in the experimental group will be significantly lower than the mean pre test scores of antenatal mothers in the control group at 0.05% level of significance. The research approach used for the study was the evaluative approach. The study was conducted using pre treatment and post treatment, randomized control design. The independent variable of the study was application of dry ginger powder and the dependent variable was nausea and vomiting. Sample size were 60 antenatal mothers of less than 16 weeks of gestation, having complaint of nausea and vomiting (30 in experimental and 30 in control group) and who attended selected Urban Health Centres, Belgaum. Simple random sampling (lottery) method was used. Data was collected by using a modified Rhodes index rating scale and was tabulated and analyzed in terms of objectives of the study, using descriptive and inferential statistics. Result: The major findings of the study were as follows: The mean difference between the pre and post treatment scores of the experimental group was (11.2) with differential standard deviation of 0.17 and the calculated Paired 't' test between pre treatment and post treatment nausea and vomiting scores 21.88 which is greater than the tabulated value, it showed that there was significant reduction in nausea and vomiting (p<0.00001). The mean difference between the pre and post treatment scores of the control group was 0.8 with differential standard deviation of 0.27 and the calculated Paired 't' test between pre and post treatment scores 8.3 which was greater than the tabulated value, it showed that there was no much reduction in nausea and vomiting. Unpaired 't' test between post treatment scores in experimental group and post test scores in control group showed that there is significant reduction of nausea and vomiting in experimental group compared to control group.(p<0.00001). The result showed that dry ginger powder is an effective, cost effective and non pharmacological treatment used for reduction in number of episodes of nausea and vomiting among antenatal mothers.