Factors affecting quality of care in family planning clinics: a study from Iran.
BACKGROUND
Despite good contraceptive coverage rates, recent studies in Iran have shown an alarmingly high incidence of unplanned pregnancy.


OBJECTIVE
To determine factors affecting quality of family planning services, a cross-sectional study was performed from June to August 2006 on women visiting urban Primary Health Care clinics in a provincial capital in western Iran. The primary focus of the study was on provider-client interaction.


METHODS
We used a slightly edited version of a UNICEF checklist and a convenient sampling method to assess quality of care in 396 visits to the family planning sections at 25 delivery points.


RESULTS
Poor performance was observed notably in Counselling and Choice of method sections. In logistic regression analysis, the following factors were found to be associated with higher quality of care: provider experience [OR (odds ratio)=1.9, CI(0.95) (confidence interval)=1.2-3.0], low provider education (OR=6.7, CI(0.95)=4.0-10.8), smaller workload at the clinic (OR=3.7, CI(0.95)=2.0-6.7), and 'new client' status (OR=4.2, CI(0.95)=2.6-6.7).


CONCLUSIONS
This study identified the issues of counselling and information exchange as the quality domains in serious need of improvement; these areas are expected to be the focus of future training programmes for care providers. Also, priority should be given to devising effective supervision mechanisms and on-the-job training of senior nursing and midwifery graduates to make them more competent in delivering basic family planning services.
Shahidzadeh-Mahani
Ali
A
Department of Community Medicine, Institute for Health Science Research, Tehran, Iran. ashahidzadeh@ihsr.ac.ir
Omidvari
Sepideh
S
Baradaran
Hamid-Reza
HR
Azin
Seyyed-Ali
SA
D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005193:Family Planning Services / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D011247:Pregnancy; D049168:Pregnancy, Unplanned; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011787:Quality of Health Care