Utilization of unprescribed over the counter medication among trainee Nurses and Midwifeves at Holy Family NMTC,Berekum.

Abstract

There have been changes over the years in the care given to expectant mothers. Family centered maternity care study is a systematic way of providing quality care for expected mothers and their families which integrate pregnancy, childbirth, post-partum and infant care into the continuum of the family life event. Family care maternity study gives the student midwife the opportunity to use all the knowledge and skills she acquired during the period to meet the demands and challenges throughout the period of pregnancy, labour, and peurperium. The nursing process is used in the study. It aims at assessing data, planning for future outcome, implementing orders and evaluating the outcome of the problem identified. This helps the midwife to ensure a unique, standard individualized care to enhance the goal set. Appropriate management of the problems are given to ensure that, quality care is rendered through interpersonal relationship, physical, social, mental, emotional and spiritual needs of the client. The Client/Family Centered Maternity care study also offers the student midwife the opportunity to identify the effect of pregnancy on the woman and to use the knowledge and skills acquired throughout training to meet their biological, emotional, physical, psychological, economic and educational needs. It also helps the student midwife to use new trends in midwifery such as focus antenatal care during pregnancy, the use of a partograph which is recommended and tested by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the management of first stage of labour, conducting of clean delivery during the second stage of labour and active management of third stage of labour was introduced to reduce the occurrences of postpartum hemorrhage.The Client/Family Centered Maternity care study enables the student midwife to improve the interpersonal relationship between the students, the client, the family and the community as a whole. It helps to put into practice the Safe Motherhood initiative which has been adopted in order to help reduce the maternal mortality among pregnant women by improving the quality of health care, during antenatal, labour and puerperium. To achieve these aims, the client, family and the community are all involved in the preparation towards the newborn. It is also necessary to establish good rapport, use a holistic care approach so that client’s problems and minor disorders are solved through education, counseling and early measures taken to prevent complications.Finally, the family centered maternity care study also forms a part of the assessment towards acquiring the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana requirement in awarding certificate to it trained student after the completion of academic course.