Pre-eclampsia Management in Hospitals; Assessing the Extent of Compliance with International Guidelines in Selected Hospitals in Abia State, Nigeria

The study is aimed at investigating Pre-Eclampsia Management in Hospitals; Assessing the Extent of Compliance with International Guidelines in Selected Hospitals in Abia State. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The study used a non-proportionate sampling technique to select 165 midwives from a population of 400 midwives in in Federal Medical Centre Umuahia and Amachara General Hospital. A self-structured validated instrument was used to collect data. Statistical Package for Social Science version 22.0 was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics was used as the data analysis method. Hence, measures of central tendency statistics (mean), simple percentages, and charts were used to answer the research questions while z-test statistics was used to test the hypothesis. The result revealed that 15.5% of the respondents were between the age of 20 – 30years, 35.3% were between 31 – 40years, 27.4% were between 41 – 50years while 19.8& were between 51years and above, 61.4% of the respondents had B.NSc, 22.5% had M.Sc while 16.1% had PhD, 68.5% of the respondents were full-time staff while 31.5% were part-time staff, 15.5% of the respondents had less than 1 year work experience, 37.3% had 1 – 5years working experience, 27.4% had 6 – 10years working experience while 19.8% had more than 11years working experience. The study further revealed that the level of availability of the International Guidelines of pre-eclampsia management in Federal Medical Centre Umuahia and Amachara General Hospital is low, the extent of compliance with international guidelines of pre-eclampsia management in Federal Medical Centre Umuahia and Amachara general hospital is low, the factors influencing compliance with the international guideline of pre-eclampsia management in Federal Medical Centre Umuahia and Amachara general hospital were age, years of experience, type of employment amongst others. The study concludes that there are practice gaps in compliance with the guidelines among all cadres of healthcare providers with the unavailability of the guidelines topping the list. The researcher therefore recommends that there is a need to strengthen the knowledge of healthcare providers toward the prevention and management of pre-eclampsia.