Résumé
Introduction: Mother and child health is one of the major concerns of public health throughout the world. Health education and increased knowledge of mothers in relation to their health is an important strategy for improving maternal and child health
Objective: The aim of this study was the survey of postpartum women's knowledge about complications and cares after delivery
Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study that assesses postpartum women's knowledge about postpartum complications and cares in Alzahra hospital in spring of 2003. The subjects were selected with convenience sampling method [non-probability] from women with the same case. A standard questionnaire [designed by ministry of health] was used to collect the data. This questionnaire consisted of a two-part questionnaire which included: [1] the demographics [2] assessment of knowledge level. After data collection, analysis was carried out with chi-square test by spss.10 software
Results: In this study, 384 women were assessed. Data showed that the mean age of the women was 26.5 +/- 0.3 yrs. Only 10 cases [2.6%]of women had university education. The majority of subjects were housewives 389[95.8%]. An evaluation of their knowledge about postpartum complications and cares showed that 360 [93.8%] of them had very poor and 22[5.7%] of them had poor and 2[0.5%] of them had intermediate knowledge. The results indicated that there weren't statistically significant relationship between age, parity and information source with level of knowledge [P>0.05] but there were significant correlations between education level and job with knowledge level.[p<0.05]
Conclusion: Regarding the low level of the women's knowledge about postpartum cares and complications, the researchers suggest on increasing knowledge levels by means of holding different classes and counseling sessions and also continuous visiting of the patients which can help them to reach this goal