Abstract:

Background: Disrespectful behavior among nurses towards mothers in maternity settings has been identified as a key deteriorators to women seeking delivery care. Mistreatment includes physical and verbal abuse, stigma and discrimination, a poor relationship between women and providers and policy and health systems challenges. Although mistreatment of women during facility-based childbirth has received increasing recognition as a critical issue throughout the world, there remains a lack of consensus on operational definitions of mistreatment and best practices to assess the issue. Based on these studies, we aimed to determine the prevalence and predictors associated with women mistreatment during childbirth at Lake Zone regions especially Shinyanga regional referral hospital in Shinyanga Tanzania.

Objective: To determine Prevalence of disrespectful behavior among nurses towards mothers and its predictors during childbirth at Shinyanga regional and referral hospital in Shinyanga Tanzania.

Materials and Methods: A quantitative facility-based cross-section study was carried out among 160 women who were willing to participate after being consented. Questionnaires were used to gather data on participant’s characteristics (socio-demographics and obstetric). Data were summarized at a univariate level by descriptive statistics.

Results: Of the 160 participants who were involved in the study, 71 (44.3%) reported having experienced at least 1 form of mistreatment during childbirth at the hospital, while only 89 (55.6%) did not experience any form of mistreatment during childbirth at hospital

Conclusion: This study aimed to examine the prevalence of disrespectful behaviors among nurses and midwives and factors associated during childbirth in health facilities. Based on the study the results revealed the prevalence (44.3%) of mistreatment of women during childbirth in the hospital.