An Action Plan to Improve Postnatal Care in Ethiopia: A Mixed Methods Research

Abstract

Despite the efforts made in Ethiopia to decrease maternal mortality by increasing postnatal care and other maternal health care services, neither significant reduction in maternal mortality nor an increase in postnatal care utilization. The objective of this study was to develop an action plan to improve postnatal care services in the Ethiopian context. Sequential mixed-methods research, was conducted over three phases. In the first phase of the study, background information on postnatal care services in Ethiopia was assessed and described. During the second phase of the study, an action plan for postnatal care improvement was developed, and the third phase concentrated on the validation of the developed action plan. For phase 1 one of the study 422 respondents were randomly selected and participated in the study from November 1 to 30, 2020. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used for quantitative data collection. The collected data were checked for completeness, cleaned, coded, and then entered into Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software program version 21. For the thrird phase of the study a delphi technique was used to validate the developed action plan . For all phases of the study, the open-ended questions were open-coded and thematically analyzed. A validated action plan for the improvements of postnatal care was developed using the inputs from respondents during Phase 1, available literature as well as the three-round Delphi technique. The findings revealed that the developed action plan is applicable in the Ethiopian context and is crucial for improvement of postnatal care. The study revealed that the developed and validated action plan will improve postnatal care in Ethiopia. Follow-up studies to assess the limitations of the action plan can be conducted to adapt and improve the action plan. Further studies on possible challenges associated with the implementation can enhance the success of the implementation of the action plan.