Professional nurses’ attitudes towards providing termination of pregnancy services in a tertiary hospital in the North West province of South Africa

Abstract

The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (no 92 of 1996) was implemented during 1997. This study attempted to investigate professional nurses’ attitudes towards rendering termination of pregnancy (TOP) services at a tertiary hospital in the North West Province of South Africa. A quantitative descriptive research design was used to study professional nurses’ attitudes towards providing TOP services. The research results, obtained from questionnaires completed by professional nurses, indicated that most professional nurses’ attitudes included that women should be at least 16 years of age to access these services; women should not be able to access repeated TOPs; nurses would prefer to administer pills rather than to use vacuum aspirations; nurses should work in TOP services by choice only. TOP centers should have better equipment, more resources and more staff members. Nurses working in TOP services would appreciate receiving more support from their families, friends, managers and communities. Some professional nurses experienced guilt, depression, anxiety and religious conflicts as a result of providing TOP services. Despite the legalisation of TOPs, these services remained stigmatised. Professional nurses did not want to work in these services and also did not want to be associated with them.

Shaping legal abortion provision in Ghana: using policy theory to understand provider-related obstacles to policy implementation

“…Some midwives who did refer clients to providers for help then prayed for forgiveness. The primacy of religious and moral issues in the debate about provision of safe-abortion services is widely documented in the literature [7,26,32,35-37]. Our findings are also confirmed by studies on the religious and moral dilemmas facing nurses in South Africa [25,26] and midwives in France [36].…”

“…The primacy of religious and moral issues in the debate about provision of safe-abortion services is widely documented in the literature [7,26,32,35-37]. Our findings are also confirmed by studies on the religious and moral dilemmas facing nurses in South Africa [25,26] and midwives in France [36]. In Ghana, work by Aboagye et al [2] who assessed provision of comprehensive abortion care in three regions in Ghana, also found that provider hesitance in providing abortions was because of perceived religious conflicts as well as uncertainty of the legality of abortion, doubts about the standards and protocols for abortion care, and perceived lack of administrative support.…”

Clarifying Values and Transforming Attitudes to Improve Access to Second Trimester Abortion

“…Additionally, given providers' reports of stress and harassment and their desire for more support, values clarification can help to create a more enabling environment and strengthen coping mechanisms. 7,25,51,53 Programmatic experiences described here indicate that values clarification can have a positive impact on the attitudes and behaviours of a variety of stakeholders. To what extent values clarification can positively influence policy, service delivery, quality of care, access to services and community support for women seeking abortion and providers offering care remains to be studied.…”

Provider Attitudes to Emergency Contraception in Ghana and Burkina Faso

“…Other studies have highlighted the dilemmas of the provider-client relationship where medical professionalism sometimes conflicts with particular beliefs or views on morality (Koch and Jones, 2010; Richey 2008), and where providers pass judgement on clients based on their own moral standpoint. This has been found elsewhere in a range of settings (Lupton, 1994;Mokgethi et al, 2006;Richey, 2008), including some situations where providers make a "moral" decision to withhold medical services (Curlin, et al, 2007).…”