Bmc Pregnancy Childb
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Bmc Pregnancy Childb · Mar 2016
Development of a tool to measure women's perception of respectful maternity care in public health facilities.
Maternal mortality continues to be the biggest challenge facing Ethiopia and other developing countries. Although progress has been made in making maternity services available closer to the community, the rate of deliveries attended by skilled birth attendants has remained very low. Absence of respectful maternity care (RMC) is believed to have contributed to low utilization of facility delivery services. This study outlines steps undertaken to construct and validate a scale that measures women's perception of respectful maternity care provided in health facilities. ⋯ The 15-item RMC scale is a valid and reliable measure of women's perception of RMC received in health facilities. We recommend that health facilities use the RMC scale in urban public health facilities and that other researchers conduct further exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in different geographic areas.