The necessity to determine the indices to surveillance of preconception care

Preconception care in order to maintain and promote maternal health has been designed and the criteria for measurement of personnel's performance are determined by the client's satisfaction. Therefore, the present study was conducted aimed to determine how to provide pre-pregnancy services and women's satisfaction.

This descriptive study was performed in 2020 on 280 women of reproductive age who had referred to 8 health centers in Shahroud to receive preconception care. The tool used in this study was the midwifery demographic form of the research unit and the self-report questionnaire of women at reproductive age in the field of health personnel performance and the questionnaire of satisfaction with the preconception care. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and SPSS software (version 20). P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.

The results showed that there is no standard index to determine the quality of pre-preconception care. Also, these cares are provided incompletely. The most performance offered by the staff was in the field of folic acid consumption and the lowest was in mental health and sexual health education. However, 97% of women were satisfied and very satisfied with the care provided in the health centers.

The results of the study showed that women of childbearing age were not aware of the content of prenatal care, because despite the poor performance of staff, they reported high satisfaction with receiving care, so patients' satisfaction is not sufficient to measure the quality of care.