Respectful Maternity Care and Associated Factors Among Women Who Attended Delivery Services in Referral Hospitals in Northwest Amhara, Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND: Disrespectful and abusive care is a violation of women rights to self-determination, health, life, body integrity, and privacy. Providing respectful maternity care (RMC) during labour and delivery is one of the enhancing factors and targets in the Ethiopian health sector strategic plan to promote facility delivery. However, providing respectful maternity care is still a major challenge in the Ethiopia health-care system. This study aimed to assess respectful maternity care and associated factors among women who attended delivery services in Northwest Amhara, referral hospitals, Ethiopia. METHODS: Health-facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted at Northwest Amhara, referral hospitals from March 1 to April 1, 2020. A systematic random sampling technique was used to identify study participants in the referral hospitals. A total of 410 women who gave birth were enrolled in the study. A pre-tested and structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The data were collected during the exit interview. Data were cleaned and entered into Epi data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 23 for further analysis. Both bi-variable and multi-variable logistic regressions were employed in the analysis. Variables with a p-value of less than 0.05 were used to declare as statistically significantly associated with the dependent variable. RESULTS: The overall magnitude of women who have received respectful maternity care was 56.3%. Four and above antenatal care follow-up adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 3.092 (95% CI: 1.676, 5.725), previous history of facility delivery AOR 2.53 (95% CI: 1.094, 5.867), and delivery time AOR 2.46 (95% CI: 1.349, 4.482) were found significantly associated with respectful maternity care. CONCLUSION: The overall magnitude of respectful maternity care was low as compared to international and national standards. This study showed that respectful maternity care among women who gave birth was influenced by the number of antenatal care visits, previous history of facility delivery, and delivery time.