Impact of Usage of Mobile Phone during Pregnancy among Antenatal Women Attending Antenatal Clinic

Mobile phone is a long range, portable electronic device used for communication, text messaging, for access to the internet, and multimedia messaging. As a result, many people including pregnant women spend their large part of their time with mobile phones. The cell phone radiations cause many ill effects affecting the physical, mental and the emotional state of pregnant women. A Pre-experimental study was conducted among 50 antenatal women who were selected by non-probability convenient sampling technique. The study was conducted in hospitals, to determine the knowledge regarding impact of usage of mobile phone during pregnancy. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire using demographic proforma of antenatal women and knowledge questionnaire.The data collected was analysed and interpreted based on descriptive and inferential statistics. In the present study, it was found that, majority 20 (40%) of the antenatal women were in the age group of 21-25 years, majority 21(42%) of the antenatal women had education up to secondary, majority 28 (56%) of the antenatal women were house wives, majority 18 (36%) of the antenatal women family income ranged between Rs 3001--5000/-, majority 18 (36%) of the antenatal women gestational period ranged from 13-28 weeks.It was observed that, majority 33(66%) of the antenatal women relied on only one source of health information, majority 24 (48%) of the antenatal women were in their first pregnancy, majority 48 (96%) of the antenatal women were using mobile phone, majority 16 (32%) antenatal women's mobile phone usage duration per day was 1 hour, majority (78%) of the antenatal women did not have the base station near to their living area.The mean post-test knowledge score (18.88±3.12) was higher than the mean pre-test knowledge score (10.96±3.36) which showed that there is highly significant difference between the mean pre-test and post-test knowledge scores.From the findings of the study, it can be concluded that structured teaching programme is effective in improving the knowledge regarding impact of usage of mobile phone during pregnancy among antenatal women.