The findings from the use of questionnaires and documented interviews revealed that mothers with knowledge of care have a high degree of satisfaction with interpersonal relationships, providers’ actions, and general care. Few women reported dissatisfaction especially from care providers with negative attitude and using bad language due to unawareness on expected PPC outcomes. Most importantly, rising awareness regarding elements of quality PPC services increases confidence in care experiences. With this, most mothers manages to access quality PPC not only for themselves but also the infants.
The crucial determinants triggering women’s satisfaction involve the engagement of confident medical experts, using practical communication skills, showing competency, and upholding an individual’s dignity. Notably, mothers tend to revisit and refer facilities embracing quality PPC, which may eventually lead to overcrowding. Therefore, it is crucial to consider improving PPC homecare services through in-depth accountability and supervision to ensure equal provision of services at medical centers and community levels.
Moreover, the reports from health workers and midwives indicated that women who are aware of maternal health issues and complications that can happen during the postpartum period have higher chances of using PPC than those unaware.
Awareness of maternal delivery complications is an essential aspect in encouraging mothers to visit healthcare services earlier aim of prevention and promoting early detection. With this, it would become quick to manage any sign of occurring complications while making a better decision by health workers. Mainly, vast knowledge results from wider exposer to mass media that influence the need for PPC services.
The delivery place influences women’s awareness and understanding of the significance of PPC in improving maternal health. By this, women who deliver at health centers as opposed to homes records a higher rate of getting PPC visitation. Giving birth at a facility is significantly related to increased utilization of PPC services. The positive correlation between PPC practice utilization and delivery place occurs from the fact that women getting birth from medical centers have higher chances of health education on the importance of PPC services. Following this, they have a more excellent opportunity of accessing learning regarding forms, advantages, and presents of PPC services during hospital stays. Such exposure raises health seeking habits that aid in safeguarding maternal and newborn complications than those women opting for home delivery. The difference in care-seeking care exists as mothers giving birth at home embrace traditional approaches and thus less likelihood of considering PPC services.
Additionally, the findings reveal that the provision of postpartum care services has been highly influenced by broadly influenced by delivery complications occurring during childbirth. Notably, mothers who experienced delivery complications during their first childbirth have higher chances of getting PPC services than women who not subjected to any childbirth complication. In line with this, mothers with past experiences of childbirth complications gained unique emphasis by health specialists on PPC education and serious scheduling for serious follow-up. Equally, it is due to fear of additional health complications that create huge interest for regular checkups through PPC services.
Results of birth is another crucial variable that significantly influences PPC usage. Women giving birth to live neonates are three times more chances of getting PPC services than those giving birth to stillbirth. The occurrences may be from the fact that good results of birth facilitate a favorable implication on PPC follow-up for mothers and infants. Besides, the utilization of PPC practices is significantly stirred by the mode of delivery. Women delivering by cesarean section records a higher chance of getting PPC visitations than those giving childbirth through spontaneous virginal birth. Such situations occur due to the development of fear of severe complications that stimulate the need for preventing possible and further complications.
Still, the medical personnel put complicated women during childbirth in a particular room of care to foster the prevention of incredible health issues. At this point, regular checkup through PPC services is crucial in examining and determine if a mother has improved or not. The finding also revealed that most fail to attend to PPC services for lack of adequate knowledge about its benefits and inexperience of childbirth complications.
Improvising Homecare education for mothers
Bridging theory applies to enable community and healthcare workers to conduct home visits to involve and sensitize mothers about the benefits of PPC during the postpartum period. Women need the acquisition of necessary information about identifying postpartum danger signs and the significance of attending the health institution for physical examination visit for self and infants. These home visits would be made a success by sensitizing the community on the need for PPC events. In practice, the community and facility workers need to link and work closely in improvising techniques that aid in educating mothers.
Trust from the community remains a vital element for community intervention to excel. Therefore, community health workers need the selection of the society they serve in offering PPC services to create a sense of belongingness. Typically, the health professional will gain a strong sense of intrinsic responsibility to the immediate community by providing practical bridging functions.
Linking Family Planning into Postpartum Care as Quality Improvement Approach
The value of integrating the use of family planning to PPC services is universally recognized. The findings revealed that most couples opt to space their children by about two years with women accessing health facilities multiple times during pregnancy, childbirth, and within the first year of a child’s life. Given the heightened needs for family planning, healthcare workers report an increasing demand for family planning contraceptives, such as IUDs and condoms, as a way of improving maternal and infant health during the postpartum period. Mainly, different contraceptives remain usable for protection from pregnancy during the postpartum year.
The programs that facilitate renewed interests on reversible and long-acting family planning techniques during the postpartum period record promising outcomes in the provision of PPC services. Healthcare providers have shown undertaking primary competency, logistics, and commitments towards educating mothers to embrace family planning methods during the postpartum period. Such approaches create a better opportunity for child breastfeeding, care, and avoiding early pregnancy after delivery. Besides, family planning will enable mothers to minimize missed PPC services due to intense interventions on creating awareness during the period. Notably, more extensive usage of contraceptives is achievable by involving key stakeholders such as men, women, adolescents, health workers, and policymakers to help in shaping the PPC interventions package.
The postpartum family planning (PPFP) is also a useful quality improvement tool for integrating health services. Some of the crucial activities involve offering counseling in the postpartum ward and training health staff on how to handle patients uniquely. The health workers revealed the proportion of women and their husbands receiving PPFP counseling increasing drastically. Primarily, formulating private counseling approaches is significant since it allows husbands who were not allowed into postpartum wards to join their wives. After finishing the private counseling sessions, both partners can select their desired family planning method that eventually aids in the improvement of maternal and neonate health.
The introduction of PPFP counseling to women and their husbands records a noteworthy increment of women leaving health institutions with the desired contraceptive method. With this, the majority of mothers receiving PPFP counseling preferred taking preferred contraceptives during the postpartum period. Therefore, health and community programs need to focus on advocating for the interlinkage of family planning and PPC services for potential improvement of maternal and infant health. The quality improvement staffs have to provide practical aspects to assist people in understanding possible barriers to the integration of health services by showing positive results and interventions.
Study’s Strengths and Limitations
The significant strength of this research is the use of multiple primary sources of data collections that facilitate the gaining of broader perspectives of improvement of PPC services. The target group was composed of health and community experts and mothers with firsthand information on PPC. It allowed for a more comprehensive interpretation and explanation of the findings. However, the limited engagement of external specialists to provide their perceptions on improving the quality of PPC could hinder further research.
Conclusion
The usage of postpartum services has widely gained recognition following education and awareness on the need for mothers to improve their health and that of the infant after delivery. Some of the stimulators that necessitate mothers to seek PPC services are past experiences delivery complications, place and mode of child delivery, and learning of positive outcomes. The health and community staffs need to, therefore, promote PPC service provisions to safeguard mother and infant health through follow-up guidelines that increase service utilization. The key aspects to increase PPC services involve improving engagement, adequate preparation by health workers to handle prenatal services, embracing routine PPC, engaging competent stakeholders, boosting homecare, and integrating family planning approaches.
Family Planning & Postpartum Care for Maternal Health. (2022, Jul 16). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/the-interlinkage-of-family-planning-and-postpartum-care-services-for-potential-improvement-of-maternal-and-infant-health/