Authors: Owonikoko Kola Musliudin, Agbaje Michael Ademola, Tijani Mikhail Aramide, Oke Oluwaseyi Felix.
Background: Family planning and hence contraception, improves maternal health. The sources of information about and the acquisition of contraceptives is an important factor to consider in the overall utilization/ uptake of contraceptives generally.
Aims: To identify factors that influences counselling, prescription pattern of contraception methods among public healthcare workers and factors influencing it.
Methods and Materials: This was a cross-sectional, descriptive study among consenting health care workers in family planning clinics in public health care facilities in Ogbomoso, Southwest Nigeria. The instrument of survey was a self-administered structured, questionnaire. Data were analysed by SPSS window version 17.0 software package.
Results: The mean age of the respondents was 34.4 ± 6.1years. More than third (38.6%) of the respondents had practiced for 5-7 years. All the respondents were aware of pills, injectable, IUCD and male condom as a method of contraception. Majority of the respondents’ (79.3%) had used a form of contraceptives with 55.9% currently using contraceptives. In all the respondents’ health centres pills, injectable, male condom and IUCD were available forms of contraceptives. Larger proportion of the respondents’ (55.9%) had changed patient’s choice of contraceptives before with the major reason being that most of those patients (30.9%) had inadequate knowledge about the chosen contraceptives and presumed non-compliance with the chosen method (29.6%). In majority of the respondents’, past clinical experience (72.4%), marital status of clients and their religion believe were the major factors that most often inform their choice of counselling patients for contraceptives.
Conclusion: The study revealed that clinicians experience, patients’ socio-demographics particularly marital status and religious beliefs were major determinants of counselling patterns while prescription patterns for healthcare workers were determined by personal experiences and socio-demographics of patients.
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