Factors Predicting Adequacy of Prenatal Care among Pregnant Women in Bangladesh

Abstract

The Bangladesh government is implementing a prenatal care policy that provides low cost prenatal care in all public healthcare facilities. Despite the implementation of the policy, Bangladesh continues to register low levels of prenatal care services accessibility. Based on the Pender revised health promotion model, a descriptive predictive study was utilized. A convenience sampling was used to recruit 257 pregnant women who were admitted for giving birth at tertiary level hospitals in Bangladesh. The data were collected by using the following tools: personal data form, the adequacy of prenatal care utilization index, the perceived benefits of prenatal care scale, the perceived barriers to prenatal care scale, the social support scale, the women’s autonomy measurement scale, and timing of pregnancy recognition scale. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, spearman correlation coefficients and logistic regression. The findings showed that about one third (33.08%) of the participants received adequate prenatal care. There were significant positive correlations between adequacy of prenatal care and timing of pregnancy recognition, perceived benefits of prenatal care. A negative relationship was found between adequacy of prenatal care and perceived barriers. A logistic regression analysis indicated that two selected variables could significantly predict adequacy of prenatal care were timing of pregnancy recognition and perceived benefits of prenatal care. This finding suggested to be that nurse administrators could apply this finding in Bangladesh for develop proper intervention programs to improve adequacy of prenatal care among pregnant women that can contribute to enhance adequate prenatal care.