An Exploratory Study to assess the Expectations of Mothers During Labour from Professional Nurses in a Selected Hospital, Ludhiana

Background: Child birth is supposed to be a positive experience and should leave a good impression on a women's life and psychological state. Women's psychological wellbeing depends on whether their expectations of child birth care met or not so the support they receive during this time is critical. Consumers are demanding a more humanistic approach to obstetric care and a greater share of responsibility for the events surrounding birth. The investigator came across her previous experiences from the intranatal patient care and some concerned non formal interview of mothers in labour room found their high expectations and some sort of un-satisfaction towards care they were getting. Many expectations from nurses regarding the care given and the need was felt to assess their expectations and then compensate the areas where it lacked.

Method: An exploratory approach was used to assess the expectations of mothers during first stage of labour. The hospital selected for the study was Christian Medical College & hospital, Ludhiana,Punjab and the department selected was labour room. The sample of the present study consist of 100 mothers who were in first stage of labour. The sampling technique adopted was purposive sampling. A self structured questionnaire was prepared an was divided in to two parts, socio demographic data and 60 items related to check the expectations of mothers during labour from professional nurses.

Result: majority 64% of mothers belonged to the age group of 18-27 years and were graduates(40%). 85% were housewives, Hindus and from urban area, got information from friends and relatives. The highest mean percentage expectation score of mothers were fond under the dimension of interpersonal communication style and provision of information(94.83%) and least in physical comfort(79.35%). The overall mean expectation of mother was 89.72%. moters under the age group of 18-27 got a high mean expectation score (108.15) and found that younger the mother, higher the expectation from professional nurses.Level of education was also found an impact on the expectation of mothers.higher the education of mothers ,lower the expectation score.

Conclusions: The study was indicated that majority of mothers had high expectations from the professional nurses under the dimension of interpersonal communication style and provision of information(94.83%) and least in physical comfort(79.35%).