Utilization of the Partograph Among Nurse-Midwives at a County Referral Hospital in Kenya

Abstract

Introduction: The Partograph is a tool that monitors active stages of labour. This enables skilled birth attendants, who are largely midwives, to monitor progress of labour, the mother and the fetus regularly. It provides a clear means of tracking labour progress with ‘alert’ and ‘action’ lines that signal when labour has become complicated. It helps in the management of labour by providing information to identify women who are or not likely to have a normal delivery.Objective: To assess partograph utilization among nurse-midwives in the maternity unit of Coast General Hospital, Mombasa.Methods: This was a descriptive study among midwives and nurse-midwives working in the Maternity unit of Coast general hospital, Mombasa. All 59 nurse-midwives who were working in the unit during the study period were included in the study with an eventual response rate of 86% (51). Data was collected using a self-administered semi- structured questionnaire. Qualitative data was cleaned, coded and analyzed thematically while quantitative data was entered in an excel worksheet and analyzed for descriptive statistics.Results: The majority of the nurse-midwives (N= 98%) had used the partograph. The study found that, nurse-midwives’ knowledge has positive significance with utilization of partograph P-value= 0.000. Level of Partograph utilization was found to be significant with a p-value= 0.000< 0.05. High perception of nurse-midwives’ on utilization of partograph was significant with a p-value=0.000<0.05.Conclusion: The study found that all of the nurse-midwives had used a partograph and agreed with most aspects regarding assessment on the usage. Training institutions and hospitals have to improve on training on partograph to enhance knowledge and practice

Keywords: Partograph, nurse-midwives, knowledge, utilization, and perception.