KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE OF PREGNANT WOMEN REGARDING MEDICINES USE IN PREGNANCY

Background: It has become clear that pregnant women around the world are using more drugs in recent years, both with and without doctor's prescription and over-the-counter. Aim of the study: This study was conducted to: asses the knowledge, attitude, and practice of pregnant women regarding medicine use during pregnancy, and asses the knowledge of the potential risk of using non-prescribed medications during pregnancy. Patients and methods: Across-sectional study had been conducted from January 2022 to July 2022, on (404) pregnant women who attended three main hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology (Al-Batool Teaching Hospital, Al-Khansaa Teaching Hospital and A-Salam Teaching Hospital) in Mosul city, the northern part of Iraq for various medical issues. A random sampling technique was used as the sampling technique selection for this study, a recommended method of sampling for such types of research. All women were between the ages of 15-4, cooperative women with no disability to understand and answer all the questionnaire aspects were included in the study. A well-organized scoring system was utilized in this study to demonstrate the actual influence of participant's knowledge, practice and attitude derived from Bloom's cut-off point, into good, satisfactory and poor categories. This study's statistical evaluation was conducted with the aid of statistical Package for the Social Sciences software version 26 (SPSS Inc.) and P values < 0.05 were accepted as statistically significant. Results: The present study included 404 patients with a mean age of 27.44+-6.18, with 264 (65.3%) < 30 years and 140 (34.7%) >30 years. Regarding the educational level most patients had primary education (48%), followed by illiterate (21.3%), secondary education (17.6 %) and finally only (13.1%) with higher education. Additionally, the majority of patients were housewives (87.1%) compared to (12.9%) employees. Also, nearly half of the patients were form urban areas (51 %) and (49%) from rural areas. The majority of patients had a history of drug use (95 %) compared to only (5 %) with no history of medicines use. Additionally the majority of women were multiparous (71.8 %) compared to (28.2%) primiparous. In term of knowledge score analysis of the enrolled patients, the study showed that the majority of patients had good knowledge (72.3%) and only (2.7%) had poor knowledge. Regarding attitude score analysis of the enrolled patients, the study showed that the majority of the patients had good attitudes (74.3%) compared to (0.7%) with poor attitudes. In terms of practice score analysis, most patients had fair practice levels (49%), while only (2.7%) had poor practice levels. Conclusion: Most of the enrolled pregnant women were multiparous, with a primary education level, housewives and a history of drug use. Additionally, most of them demonstrated good knowledge and attitude, and fair practice towards medication use during pregnancy.