Investigating the Effectiveness of Self-care Training on Improving the Physical Health Status of Pregnant Women

Abstract

Background: Self-care during pregnancy includes principles and care programs that lead to clinical outcomes and effectively reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes. Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of self-care training in improving the physical health status of pregnant women. Methods: This semi-experimental study was conducted on 116 pregnant mothers referred to the health centers of Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences in a simple random fashion with permutation blocks with two intervention (58 people) and control (58 people) groups. Demographic, skeletal, and muscular discomfort questionnaires were used to collect data, and data were collected before and after the intervention in both groups. After collecting the data, it was entered into SPSS 18 and analyzed with the help of descriptive and analytical statistics. Results: In this study, the results showed that out of 116 pregnant mothers participating, 58 were in the intervention group and 58 were in the control group, and between the variables of age (P = 0.001) and occupation (P = 0.003), job status (P = 0.042), gestational age (P = 0.001), number of deliveries (P = 0.001), exercise (P = 0.002), also there was a significant relationship between exercise time (P = 0.003) and physical health, and there was no significant relationship with the rest of the variables, and the average physical health in the control group before the intervention was 29.74 ± 6.97 and after the intervention was 28.41 ± 7.44 and in the intervention group before the intervention, it was 30.82 ± 6.38, and after the intervention, it was 27.7 ± 6.33, and there was a significant relationship between physical health and intervention. Conclusions: The results showed that self-care training increases the physical health of pregnant women; on the other hand, it is a very important tool for designing and implementing educational interventions to improve women's health.