Effectiveness of Patterned Breathing Technique in Reduction of Pain during First Stage of Labour among Primigravida women in Selected Hospitals, Kerala

Objectives:

• To assess pain level among primigravida women during first stage of labour in experimental group and control group before practicing patterned breathing technique. 
• To assess pain level among primigravida women during first stage of labour in experimental group and control group after practicing patterned breathing technique. 
• To compare the pain level among primigravida women in experimental and control group. 

Design: A Non Equivalent Pre-test Post-test control group design was adopted for the study. Settings: The study was conducted at various hospitals in Kerala. Samples: In this study, the samples are the primigravida women who were admitted to the antenatal wards of selected hospitals, Kerala and also those who satisfy the inclusion criteria are included as samples in the study. The sample size was 60. The sampling technique used is Nonprobability purposive sampling. Then the subjects were assigned to the experimental group (30) and control group (30). Result: The researcher found that the mean pre-test score of pain level in primigravida women before practicing Patterned breathing technique in experimental was (2.6) which is less than control group which is (2.8) with a mean difference of (0.2), which is not significant as evident from 'z' value of (1.68) which is less than 0.05 level of significance. Conclusion: It was concluded from the statistical tests that practicing selected Patterned breathing technique was effective in reduction of pain among primigravida women during first stage of labour. Analysis of data showed that there was significant difference between pre test and post test pain scores of pain level in experimental group after practicing Patterned breathing technique and without practicing Patterned breathing technique control group.