Article Sidebar
Article Details
The entire contents of the Tropical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology are protected under Indian and international copyrights. The Journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights. The journal also grants the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal non-commercial use.
This journal content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
Main Article Content
The Nigerian-Based Obstetrician and the Stress of Obstetric Emergencies
Abstract
Objective: To assess the extent to which these adverse factors exert stress on Nigerian-based obstetricians.
Method: A self-administered structured questionnaire survey of obstetricians in training or practice in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria. Stress was defined and then graded from 1 to 10 with 1 representing minimal stress and 10 representing maximal stress.
Main Outcome Measure: Stress score.
Results: The questionnaire was administered to all 67 eligible obstetricians, 57 (85.1%) of whom completed it. Compared to a mean stress score of 2.7 at their Nigerian homes and 5.5 ± 2.5 when faced with an obstetric emergency in developed countries, Nigerian-based obstetricians experience a mean stress score of 7.1 ± 1.9 when faced with an obstetric emergency in their private practice and 8.4 ± 2.1 when faced with an emergency in government practice. In private practice, the five leading stressors were: sourcing blood for transfusion, electricity supply, anaesthetists, sourcing materials for treating patients and telephone services, in that order. In government practice, the five leading stressors were the same but the ordering was different. Nine (15.8%) respondents felt that obstetric practice in Nigeria had no effect on their health while 48 (84.2%) felt that it had an ill effect.
Conclusion:Emergency obstetric practice is more stressful in Nigeria than in developed countries because of poor infrastructure and difficulty with sourcing the materials required to treat patients.
Key Words: Obstetrician, Stress, Stressor, Obstetric Emergencies
[Trop J Obstet Gynaecol, 2003, 20: 44-48]
