ID Design 2012/DOOEL Skopje, Republic of
Macedonia
Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences.
https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2017.036
eISSN: 1857-9655
Public Health
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Factors Influencing Antenatal
Haematinics Prescription Behaviour of Physicians in Calabar, Nigeria
Ubong Akpan1*, Thomas Agan1,
Emmanuel Monjok2, Chinedu Okpara2, Saturday Etuk1
1Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, University of Calabar,
Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria; 2Department of Community
Medicine, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria; 3Department of
Chemical Pathology, University of Calabar, Nigeria
BACKGROUND: Routine iron and folic acid supplementation in pregnancy
have been proved to be effective in reducing the prevalence and morbidities
of anaemia. However, there is limited data regarding the prescription habits
of physician obstetric care givers.
AIM: This study set to investigate the attitudes and factors which
influence the practice among physicians in University of Calabar Teaching
Hospital (UCTH).
MATERIAL AND METHODS: A questionnaire based cross-sectional survey
was conducted among randomly recruited physician offering antenatal services
between August and September 2015. Systemic sampling was used to select 70
doctors in the departmental duty roster. Data were presented in percentages
and proportion. Chi-square test was used to test the association between
variables. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.
RESULTS: The response rate was 100%. The mean age of the respondents
was 30.26 ± 6.67 years. All the respondents routinely prescribed haematinics
to pregnant women but 34.3% of them did not prescribe to apparently healthy
clients in their first trimester. Only 30% and 11.4% of them prescribed it
in the postnatal and preconception periods respectively. Brands that
contained iron, folate and vitamins as a single capsule were mostly favoured,
and information about brands of drugs was mostly provided by the
pharmaceutical sales representatives. Younger doctors were more likely to
offer haematinics with nutritional counselling compared to older
respondents. However, there was no significant relationship between
haematinics prescription and sex (p = 0.3560), Age (p = 0.839), current
professional status (p = 0.783), and client complaint of side effect of
medication (p = 0.23). Oral medication was mostly utilised.
CONCLUSION: Effort to effectively control anaemia in pregnancy should
involve re-orientation of physician obstetric care providers especially
about prenatal and postnatal medication and counselling.
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Citation: Akpan U, Agan T, Monjok E, Okpara C,
Etuk S. Factors Influencing Antenatal Haematinics Prescription Behaviour of
Physicians in Calabar, Nigeria. Open Access Maced J Med Sci. https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2017.036
Keywords: Anaemia; iron; folate; Ranferron 12; prescription;
counseling.
*Correspondence: Dr Ubong Akpan, Department of Obstetrics and
Gynaecology, University of Calabar. Cross River State, Nigeria. Phone:
+2348039099041. E-mail: ubongabasiakpan@gmail.com
Received: 19-Jan-2017; Revised: 09-Feb-2017; Accepted: 10-Feb-2017; Online
first: 20-Mar-2017
Copyright: © 2017 Ubong Akpan, Thomas Agan, Emmanuel Monjok, Chinedu
Okpara, Saturday Etuk. This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Funding: This research did not receive any financial support.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing
interests exist.
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