Strategies to improve utilisation of skilled birth attendance services in North West Ethiopia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine factors influencing skilled delivery service utilisation in order to develop strategies to improve utilisation of skilled birth attendance service in North West Ethiopia. The objectives were to explore and describe the perceptions and experiences of the community regarding skilled utilisation of the birth attendance service; explore reasons for non-utilisation of skilled birth attendance service; asses the health system experience of provision of skilled birth attendance service; and formulate strategies to improve utilisation of skilled birth attendance service. The study employed a qualitative, descriptive, and explorative research design to address the research questions formulated by the researcher. The study used focus group discussion guide to obtain information from pregnant women and women who gave birth recently. Furthermore, the study used an interview guide to gather information from health extension workers, midwives, health centre heads, district health office technical experts and heads. It also employed and inductive thematic analysis approach to analyse the qualitative data. The study further used the Atlas ti version 7 for the data analysis. The steps followed for the analysis were data immersion, coding, displaying, reduction, and interpretation. Overall, nine themes emerged from the analysis of the data. Consequently, the researcher used the findings of the study to develop strategies to improve the utilisation of skilled birth attendance service.