A Descriptive Study to Assess the Knowledge and Attitude among Primigravida Mothers Regarding Pregnancy Induced Hypertension at Selected Hospital of Amritsar (Punjab)

Abstract The study adopted a descriptive survey approach to assess the knowledge and attitude among primigravida mothers regarding pregnancy induced hypertension. The sample size is 100 primigravida mothers. The tool consists of 3 sections; section 1 consists of a self-administered structured demographic questionnaire, section 2 consists of a self-administered structured knowledge questionnaire with 15 knowledge items and section 3 consists of checklist attitude scale, 15 attitude items were selected for the collection of data. Reliability of the tool was established by Karl’s Pearson prophecy formulae method and the value found for the knowledge questionnaire was 0.93 and for attitude scale was 0.93. The study was conducted at J.B.B.M Civil hospital and Hartej hospitals, Amritsar. Out of 100 samples, the majority of the samples had high knowledge and minority of samples had low knowledge. Majority of the samples had favourable attitude whereas minority of samples had unfavourable attitude. There is a positively moderate correlation between knowledge and attitude. The study findings show that there is significant association of knowledge and attitude scores with selected demographic variables such as age, education, religion, type of family occupation and dietary habits. Based on findings the following recommendations are offered for future research: (i) A similar study can be tried on different settings and samples, (ii) A study can be replicated with larger samples, (iii) A comparative study can be conducted by comparing the knowledge and attitude of antenatal and postnatal mothers regarding pregnancy induced hypertension, (iv) A Study to assess the effectiveness of planned teaching programme on knowledge regarding pre-eclampsia and its management among 4th year Bsc. nursing students. Keywords: Knowledge, attitude, primigravida mothers, pregnancy induced hypertension