Assessment of educational needs in pregnancy to choose the mode of delivery for nulliparous women

Vaginal delivery is the best method of delivery. Cesarean section without obstetric indications imposed relatively high costs on the health system. One of the major causes of increased rates of cesarean section is the mother's preference, which refers to the lack of knowledge or incorrect information. The purpose of this study is determination of educational needs in pregnancy period to choose cesarean section or vaginal delivery in aspect of nulliparous women. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 15 nulliparous pregnant women referred to Ahvaz health center units in 2012. The statistical populations were selected by simple available sampling. Data were collected through structured questionnaires (alfa =0.86) by interviews method. The Data were analyzed by SPSS 16.0 software, using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation coefficient. P-Value less than 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. The results showed that the mean age of referred mothers was 25.32±4.85 years. Majority of mothers (48.7 percent) were college graduates and 68.1 percent were housekeeper. In this study, the three educational priorities in the pregnant women’s point of view were training and gaining more information about the effectiveness of delivery mode on maternal body condition, the effectiveness of delivery mode on newborn health and more information about how to vaginal delivery respectively. The results of this study suggested that Health authorities must design the educational programs based on the needs of clients to increase the effectiveness of training and also reduce the costs.