Acta Biomedica Scientia

A STUDY TO ASSESS THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SITZ BATH ON LEVEL OF PAIN AMONG POSTNATAL MOTHERS WITH EPISIOTOMY WOUND IN A SELECTED HOSPITAL AT TUMKUR KARNATAKA

Chitra Diwakaran1, Managa Gandhi2, Priya M

winpriya6@gmail.com

Sitz bath, visual analogue scale, post natal mothers, episiotomy wound

Giving birth is one of the great honours which god gave to woman, for this woman is respected everywhere. Pueperium is a period when great changes take place in a woman’s physical and mental setup that may pose a challenge to postnatal women in various ways. An episiotomy is the surgical incision made to enlarge the vaginal opening for delivery of the baby’s head. The concern of health personnel during this period should be to provide comfort to her, help her in relieving pain and to prevent infection. Enhancing healing of episiotomy wound is one of the major concerns after a normal delivery. Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of sitz bath in episiotomy wound pain among postpartum mothers. Participants and setting: 30 postnatal mothers who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were selected (with 15 each in experimental group and 15 for control group. Design: Quasi experimental design. Materials and Methods: post natal mothers were selected by using nonprobability purposive sampling technique. The pre-test level of pain was assessed using a visual analogue scale for both the groups. Sitz bath education was administered to the experimental group and the pre and post-test level of pain was assessed for both the group. Results: The result showed that in the experimental group, the pre mean score of pain level was 4.40 with an S.D of 0.736 and the post-test score was 2.86 with an S.D of 0.743 (t = 3.500 at df 14 *p<0.001), the control group pre mean score of pain level was 5.0 with an S.D. of 0.753 and the post mean score of pain level was 4.53 with an S.D. of 0.51640. In results shows that Control group and experimental group having paired mean value difference is 1.6667, in the t value is 7.123 at p<0.001. This suggests that the effectiveness of sitz bath on level of pain among postnatal mothers with episiotomy wound had a stronger impact in the experimental group than the control group. There was significant association between experimental group posttest levels of pain with demographic variables are age and status of pregnancy. Conclusion: This study shows high statistical significance and the overall post-test level of pains in experimental group in comparison with the control group. Conclusions: The study concluded that the sitz bath was effective to reduce the episiotomy pain level for postnatal mothers