Reasons why Pregnant Women do not attend prenatal Clinic at District Health Promotion Hospital and Needs for Prenatal Care

Abstract

     The aims of this qualitative study were to determine the reasons why pregnant women do not attend prenatal clinic at Health Promotion Hospital (HPH) and their needs for prenatal care. Subjects were pregnant women who lived at Samut sub-district, Prasart district. Subjects were in-depth interviewed until data saturated in which 12 pregnant women were interviewed and each was interviewed two times. Content analyses were utilized to describe the findings.

      Subjected were married, age between 17-38 years, family income between 1,500 -10,000 Baht/month with most of them completed secondary school. They stated that have a plan to have children between 2-4 children, this was multiparous, and went to prenatal care at HPH because it was close and their health financial was registered here.

      Subjects stated the reason why they did not attend prenatal clinic at HPH because two main reasons which were individual reason and health care service reason. For the individual reason, they stated the significant reason was the transportation and the long period of time being spent at the clinic. Other significant reasons were their health statuses such as this time of pregnancy were high risk pregnancy and severe complications were found. This reason was lead to the next reason. Since they have complications and high risk pregnancy so they have to go to secondary hospital and when they go there they have to continue their prenatal care at that hospital. Regarding to the needs of their prenatal care, they stated that they do not want to waste the time at the clinic and they want to have an accessible to health care services from the prenatal care, in labor and delivery, and postpartum.