Improving the level of awareness and attitude toward fertility and fertility counseling skills of health staff with both face-to-face and virtual training methods

Considering the trend of reducing fertility in recent decades, the level of awareness and attitude of health workers to fertility has an important role in achieving the country's demographic goals. Improving attitudes and improving the scientific level and skills of health workers are the basic pillars to improve the quality and quantity of health-care services. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of improving the level of awareness and attitude toward fertility and fertility counseling skills of health workers with both face-to-face and virtual training methods.

This study was a randomized controlled trial of three groups and pre-test-posttest experiments performed on 108 midwives and health-care workers working in Mashhad Health Center and Community Health Centers and Health Centers in 2015. The tools used in this study were four researcher-made questionnaires that were validated and reliable. Data analysis was performed by Chi-square test, one-way, and independent t-analysis of variance using SPSS software version 16.

The results showed a significant increase in awareness level, attitude toward fertility, and counseling skills in the studied groups after the implementation of interventions (P < 0.001). Furthermore, there was a significant inverse relationship between the attitude score of the research units at the beginning of the study and the demographic variables with only the average work experience.

Training is effective in raising the level of awareness and changing the attitude of health workers. The use of group discussion methods in person as well as through a webinar in which learners think, interact, and gain experience in promoting healthy fertility counseling promotes awareness, attitudes toward fertility, and their counseling skills in providing healthy reproductive counseling.