Postpartum Mothers’ Perspectives of Comfort Measures used by Nurses and Midwives during Labor and Delivery in a Secondary Level Hospital Maternity in Cameroon

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the various comfort measures which nurses and midwives provide during labour and delivery.

Methods: The study was a cross-sectional hospital based study, carried out in a secondary health facility. Non probability purposive sampling was used to recruit 90 post-partum women at the Buea regional hospital.

Results: A majority of the study participants were between the ages 21-30 years (61%) and most of them (68%) had normal vaginal delivery. The women reported use of a good number of comfort measures, which were physical and emotional support measures. The physical measures included providing for elimination needs and adequate fluid intake (100%), walking (65.6%) and patterned breathing exercises (52.2%) while the emotional support measure were predominantly empowering of the women (90%) and using good communication strategies like active listening (97.8%), allowing for questions and providing adequate responses (97.8%), providing information on labour progress (90%) and use of comforting words (50%). However, a substantial number of women reported that although they would have loved to have someone other than the nurse/midwife with them during labour (75.6%) and delivery (92.2%), they were not allowed. In addition, most women also reported a lack of continuous presence by nurses and midwives during labour (81.1%).

Conclusion: Generally, women in this study reported use of both physical, and emotional measures for comfort by nurses and midwives during labour and delivery. However, having a companion in the delivery room was a wish which was not granted for most women.