Labour analgesia: A survey of the practice of health care workers in North Central Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Labor is among the most painful experiences a woman will endure. Labor analgesia in low income countries as against  developed countries is not in widespread use. This is as a result of issues related to awareness, culture, acceptability and availability of analgesia. This study aims to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices for labor analgesia amongst healthcare workers.
Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional questionnairebased study on the knowledge and practice of labor analgesia among practitioners at the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Family Medicine of the Federal Medical Centre, Keffi.
Results: This study found that despite 92.3% having had education about labor analgesia and 95.2% of respondents believing labor pain should be relieved, 19.2% still believed labor analgesia should not be routinely prescribed. In addition, about 35% of the surveyed health workers had never counseled pregnant women on any form of intra-partum analgesia before, while about 24% had never prescribed labor analgesia.
Conclusion: We found that despite adequate awareness of labor analgesia, a lot of health care workers in the obstetrics unit unfortunately fail to counsel patients on and prescribe labor analgesia.