A Study on Awareness and Anxiety Level of Primigravida Mothers on Labour and its Outcome in a Selected Hospital, Mysore

Children form one of the major age groups requiring attention to refractive errors because of the high prevalence of myopia, hypermetropia and astigmatism. Visual problems in children are important because of their impact on the child's development, education, future work opportunities and quality of life. School age children constitute a particularly vulnerable group where uncorrected refractive errors may have a dramatic impact on learning capability and educational potential.

The descriptive survey approach was adopted. The population consisted of primigravida mothers in Mysore. Convenient sampling was used to obtain the sample of 60 primigravida mothers in hospital of Mysore. The data was collected using structured knowledge questionnaire and modified Sheehan's patient rated anxiety scale to assess the knowledge and anxiety level of primigravida mothers on labour and its outcome.

Majority of primigravida mothers 70% were in the age group of 18–23 years and majority 83% were belongs to Hindu. 46.6% were graduated in degree, 87% of them were housewives. 65% were in the gestational age of 36-38 weeks. Majority of 68.33% of the primigravida mothers had average level of knowledge and majority of 51.66% of primigravida mothers had moderate anxiety on labour and its outcome. There is no significance relationship found between the knowledge and anxiety of primigravida mothers with their selected demographic variables.

Being afraid of normal pregnancy and vaginal childbirth is related to the woman's general anxiety, dissatisfaction with life and disability to deal with new and demending life events. Anxiety during pregnancy and fear of delivery are thus not isolated problems, but are closely associated with the whole psychosocial network of the woman. Most of the Indian parturients still suffer from agony of labour pains due to lack of awareness. The awareness level needs to be improved about the availability of the labour, and reduction of anxiety where involvement of midwives are crucial in this education program.