Utlizaton of Obstetric Analgesia in Labor Pain Management and associated Factors among Obstetric Care Givers in Amhara Regional State Referral Hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia: A Hospital based Cross Sectonal Study Abebayehu Bitew 1* , Amare Workie 2 , Tewodros Seyum 3 and Tesfaye Demeke 4 1 Department of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Wollo University, P.O. box 1145, Dessie, Ethiopia 2 Department of Midwifery, College of Health Sciences, Wollo University, P.O. box 1145, Dessie, Ethiopia 3 Department of Midwifery, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, P.O. box 196, Gondar, Ethiopia 4 Department of Nursing, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, P.O. box 196, Gondar, Ethiopia * Corresponding author: Abebayehu Bitew, MSc in Clinical Midwifery, Department of Midwifery, College of Health Sciences, Wollo University, P.O. box 1145, Dessie, Ethiopia, Tel: +251938509376; E-mail: amityw12@gmail.com Rec Date: Jan 29, 2016; Acc Date: April 12, 2016; Pub Date: April 18, 2016 Copyright: © 2016 Bitew A, et al. This is an open-access artcle distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon License, which permits unrestricted use, distributon, and reproducton in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citaton: Bitew A, Workie A, Seyum T, et al. Utlizaton of obstetric analgesia in labor pain management and associated factors among obstetric care givers in Amhara Regional State Referral Hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia. A Hospital based cross sectonal study. J Biomedical Sci. 2016, 5:2. Abstract Back ground: Labor pain is the most severe form of pain in women’ life and it was considered as a punishment given by God. Developed countries use obstetric analgesia routnely but in developing countries including Ethiopia it is not a common practce. The aim of this study was to assess utlizaton of obstetric analgesia in labor pain management and associated factors among obstetric care givers in Amhara Regional State Referral Hospitals, North West Ethiopia. Method: Insttuton based cross sectonal study was conducted from July 1-15/2014. The study was conducted on all obstetric care givers in Amhara Regional State Referral Hospitals. Self-administered, pre-tested and structured questonnaires was used to collect the data. Data consistency was checked and entered into EpiInfo then exported to SPSS for further analysis. Descriptve analysis done, logistc regression analyses were also used to see the associaton of dependent and independent variables. Finally Odds rato and 95% Confdence interval were computed to determine the strength of associaton. Result: The overall utlizaton of obstetric analgesia in labour pain management was 40.1% which showed only non-pharmacologic methods. The utlizaton of pharmacologic obstetric analgesia methods was zero. Multvariate logistc regression showed that professionals with low level qualifcaton (AOR=2.69, 95%CI: 1.13, 6.41) and inadequate knowledge (AOR=2.57, 95%CI: 1.42, 4.65) were statstcally associated with utlizaton of obstetric analgesia. Conclusion: Proporton of obstetric analgesia utlizaton was very low; highest qualifcaton and inadequate knowledge were signifcantly associated with obstetric analgesia utlizaton. Providers need to help labouring mother with analgesia; update and make themselves familiar with obstetric analgesia. The quality and associated factors of obstetric analgesia utlizaton need to be investgated. Keywords: Pain management; Analgesia; Obstetric care giver; utlizaton; Ethiopia List of Abbreviatons and Acronyms: ACOG: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; AOR: Adjusted Odds Rato; ARSRH: Amhara Regional State Referral Hospitals; BSc: Bachelor of Science; CI: Confdence Interval; EA: Epidural Anesthesia; OR: Odds Rato; SD: Standard Deviaton; SPSS: Statstcal Package for Social Sciences Background Informaton Labour pain is a physiological phenomenon and its evoluton is associated with ischemia of uterus; during contracton, dilaton of cervix, stretching of vagina, perineum and pelvic structures [1]. Historically and culturally women have been supported and atended by other women during labour and childbirth. But, since the middle of the 20th century, majority of mothers gave insttutonal delivery and contnuous support during labour become missed practce [2]. Labour pain relief with pharmacologic analgesia is also full of myths and controversies; the concept of painless delivery was existed in the early 19th and mid-20th century by Edward and Hugson [3]. Labour pain was regarded as punishment given by God from Eve’s sin and asking for relief was considered as against God [4] for this belief in 1591, Eufane Ayane of Edinburgh was buried alive into a pit [5]. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) states that ‘‘there are no other circumstances; considered as severe as labour pain and study in United Kingdom and Finland indicated 93.5% and 80% of Research iMedPub Journals http://www.imedpub.com/ DOI: 10.21767/2254-609X.100029 Journal of Biomedical Sciences ISSN 2254-609X Vol.5 No.2:15 2016 © Under License of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License | This article is available from: http://www.jbiomeds.com/ 1