Quality of Intrapartum and New born care in public health care facilities of Wolkite town, Central Ethiopia: Facility based cross sectional study

Berhanu Semra Mulat ^1* Amare Zewdie ¹ Abebaw Wasie Kasahun ¹ Molla Gashu ¹ Adiam Nega ² Tamirat Melis ¹

• ¹ Wolkite University, Wolkite, Ethiopia
• ² Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Background: Quality of intrapartum and newborn care is increasingly recognized internationally as a critical aspect of the unfinished maternal and newborn health agenda. Even though, the world has made significant progress in reducing maternal and newborn mortality, there are still far too many preventable and treatable maternal and newborn deaths globally. Poor quality of intrapartum and newborn care has contributed to the high maternal and child mortality in low and middle income countries. However, there is no enough evidence describing the status quality of intrapartum and newborn care in Ethiopia . Thus, this study aims to assess the quality of intrapartum and newborn care in public health facilities of Wolkite town, Central Ethiopia. A facility-based cross-sectional study design was conducted from March to April 2023 among five public health facilities and observation was employed among 185 mothers. A consecutive random sampling method was applied. Data were collected through document review, interview, observation and health facility audit. Data were entered, coded and cleaned using Epidata version 4 and exported to SPSS version 25 for analysis. Descriptive summary statistics was computed . Multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors significantly associated with the outcome variable. Finally adjusted odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals and p-values < 0.05 were considered to declare statistical significance level of a variable.The study revealed that the level of good quality of intrapartum and newborn care were 35.1% and 69.7% respectively. Input quality (AOR= 4. 52; 95% CI 1.31, 14.98), five or greater years of experience (AOR=7.23; 95% CI 1.49, 35.84), received on job training (AOR=5.82, 95% CI 1.91,13.61) and friendly maternal and newborn care (AOR= 6.89; 95% CI 1.34 ,35.62) were significantly associated with quality of intrapartum care.The quality of intrapartum care is found poor in the study area.. Input quality, experience of health care providers, friendly care and having training were factors associated with quality of intrapartum care. Improving availability of essential inputs, enhancing performance of health care providers through training and objective monitoring of the standard clinical practices are crucial to ensuring quality of intrapartum care.