Quality of Life of Postnatal Mothers Attending Maternal and Child Health Clinic in Biratnagar

This cross-sectional study involved women post-delivery to 12 months who visited the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Clinic of Koshi Hospital, Province 1, Nepal. The study population included the mothers who attended the MCH clinic from post-delivery to 12 months post-delivery. Mothers with psychiatric disorders were excluded from the study population. The investigators used a non-probability purposive sampling technique to select mothers meeting the inclusion criteria. The investigators used Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) Version 1.0 to assess study participants' HRQoL after obtaining permission for Research and Development (RAND). RAND SF-36 was already validated for use in Nepal by Bhandari et al. However, the investigators again pretested the translated Nepali SF-36 among 13 mothers in the MCH Clinic of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. Cronbach's alpha was used to test the reliability, and the reported value was 0.752. Patient participants were involved in the study's pretesting. However, there was no public involvement in the research.

Independent variables: Age of mother, education status, ethnicity, religion, occupation, family income, type of family, family support, parity, number of living children, the desirability of pregnancy, mode of delivery, postpartum duration, place of delivery, and complications in recent delivery.

Dependent variable: Overall health-related quality of life score of post-delivery mothers were used.

Data was collected through face-to-face interviews using the RAND SF-36 Nepali version questionnaire from 2 September 2018 to 28 September 2018. The investigators collected a total of 129 responses. Descriptive statistics, i.e., number, percentage, mean, and standard deviation, were used to describe the demographic and obstetric variables. Mann-Whitney U test was applied to compare postnatal mothers' quality of life in different delivery modes. Similarly, Krushkal-Wallis H and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to examine the difference between the quality of life of postnatal mothers with selected socio-demographic and obstetric variables. Statistical significance was considered with a p-value ≤ 0.05.