Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Health Workers towards Safe Abortion Care Services at Asella Referral and Teaching Hospital, Central Ethiopia

Abstract

According to World Health Organization safe abortion care include services that are provided by trained health workers, supported by policies, regulations and a functional health infrastructure, including equipment and supplies. Provision of safe abortion to the extent of the law, emergency treatment of abortion complications, provision of post abortion contraception, education and other lifesaving care services are inadequately given the presence of legal, social, cultural and economic impediments. Most of health care providers are not aware of the fact that termination of pregnancy is permitted under certain conditions leading to ranges of inappropriate attitudinal frameworks or mindset implying a major barrier to give the service. The aim of this research was to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of health workers towards safe abortion service at Asella Referral and teaching hospital, Asella town, Arsi Zone, Oromia region, Ethiopia. An institutional based descriptive cross-sectional study design was used to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of health workers towards safe abortion service at Asella Referral and teaching hospital from January 2017 to May 2017. Systematic random sampling technique was used to select 185 health workers. SPSS version 20 statistical software was employed for data entry and analysis. Of the selected subjects, 99(53.5%) were in the age group of 25-29 years with the mean age of 28.45 ± 3.7 years. In this study, 150(81.1%), 126(68.1%) and 127(68.1%) of health workers had good knowledge, positive attitude and good practice towards safe abortion care .Despite the present law is less restrictive and it was found a general positive KAP of health practitioners matching with the abortion law, some areas like antiabortion attitudes, lack of training and service offering facilities, confidentiality and consequences of misinterpreting the law might be still potentially problematic.