AN EVALUATION OF PREGNANT WOMEN’S KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS MODES OF DELIVERY AT A TEACHING HOSPITAL, SOUTH-WEST, NIGERIA

This study sets outto assess the knowledge and attitude of pregnant women at the booking clinic on the preferred mode of delivery.This was a cross-sectional descriptive study of 284 consenting pregnant women who presented for antenatal care booking between 1st November 2012 and 30th of June, 2014. They were interviewed through self ?administered structured questionnaire for the literates, while the illiterate women had theirs administered by the research assistants. Data were entered, analyzed for descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS 16 statistical package. The mean age of the respondents was 28.8 ± 5.1years. About 64% of the participants had tertiary education and 62.3% (177) of the women were multipara. Overall, 85.6% of the women scored poor on knowledge about mode of delivery. Good knowledge score about mode of delivery was more among multigravidae. Positive attitude towards caesarean delivery was highest among women with previous history of miscarriages. Largely, the level of knowledge about mode of delivery was low. High level of neutrality of attitude about mode of delivery indicates that health education needs to be improved in antenatal clinics so that women would be well informed and not to be misinformed.