Pain Management Practice in Labour and Post Delivery Among Midwives in Teaching Hospitals in Ekiti State, Nigeria

The study investigated pain management practice in labour and post-delivery among midwives in teaching hospitals in Ekiti State, Nigeria. This study adopted a cross sectional survey design to investigate pain management practice in labour and post-delivery among midwives in teaching hospitals in Ekiti State. The targeted population for this research were registered midwives in teaching hospitals in Ekiti State that deals directly with women during and after labour.  Total population was used as sample size but 103 copies of questionnaire were retrieved. A self-structured questionnaire was used as the tool for collecting data from the midwives. The research instrument was subjected to scrutiny by experts in the field of nursing and test and measurement experts to assess the relevance to the subject matter. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument. The reliability index of 0.835 was obtained to ensure internal consistency of the instrument. The data collected from this study were analyzed using both inferential and descriptive statistics. It was revealed that the level of knowledge of midwives in labour and post-delivery pain management was high as Midwives have positive attitude towards labour and post-delivery pain management. However, there was low level of practice of labour and post-delivery pain management. In addition, knowledge of midwives in pain management is related to attitude of midwives in pain management. Also, midwife experience has no impact on labour and post-delivery pain management. It was recommended among others that management of teaching hospital should include policy that allows midwives to prescribe analgesics in labour and post-delivery in the organisation policy.

Keywords: Pain Management, Practice, Labour, Post-Delivery, Midwives,