Does maternal education can reduce the cesarean section?

Objective (s): Despite potential complications of cesarean section, the number of cesarean section has been increased worldwide as well as our country in recent years. In most developed countries, using educational interventions tended to decline the caesarean cases. In fact, training might be resulted in increased awareness and change women’s attitude toward cesarean delivery and could also be effective in reducing caesarean section. This quasi-experimental study was performed on 130 pregnant women in the sixth or seventh month of pregnancy that referred to urban health centers in Shahr-e kord (located in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province) in order to assess the impact of an educational intervention on reducing cesarean section. Intervention was applied to the intervention group in three sessions about 60-90 minutes. Fears of childbirth and childbirth self-efficacy questionnaire (consisting of two parts, the childbirth expectation and the self-efficacy expectation) were used for data collection. The results showed that there were no significant differences between intervention and control groups in fear of childbirth, expectations and childbirth self-efficacy scores before the intervention. However, after intervention, mean scores of fear of childbirth in intervention group was reduced and expectations and childbirth self efficacy had increased. 71.4% of mothers in intervention group and 53.8% of control mothers delivered their children naturally. The findings suggest that providing the necessary training program during pregnancy could be effective to encouraging mothers to choose the natural delivery, so the design and implementation of educational interventions in pregnancy to reduce the caesarean is recommended.