Growth Monitoring Practice and Associated Factors Among Health Professionals at Public Health Facilities of Bahir Dar Health Centers, Northwest Ethiopia, 2021

BACKGROUND: Growth monitoring and promotion are one of the health priorities in assessing the growth rate of a child. Appropriate growth monitoring and promotion services enable health professionals to control growth faltering and child mortality. However, there is limited information on the growth monitoring practice of health professionals and their associated factors at public health facilities of Bahir Dar health centers. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the growth monitoring practice of health professionals and associated factors at public health facilities of Bahir Dar health centers, northwest Ethiopia. METHODS: Institutional-based cross-sectional study for quantitative and phenomenology for qualitative was conducted from April 15 to May 15, 2021, among 314 health professionals, in Bahir Dar town, northwest Ethiopia. Census was used. A self-administered questionnaire was employed for quantitative data. Data were cleaned and entered into Epi-info version 7.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for further analysis, and the binary logistic regression was employed. In the bi-variable analysis, those variables with a p-value less than 0.2 were fitted to multivariable analysis. Qualitative data were analyzed by using thematic analysis. RESULTS: The overall growth monitoring practice of health professionals at Bahir Dar public health centers was 30.3%, with a response rate of 98.1. The number of participants who had at least a degree was [AOR = 3.57; 95% CI: 1.54, 8.26], health professionals who had greater than 11 years of work experience [AOR = 2.98; CI: 1.36, 6.53], those who took training [AOR = 5.11; CI: 2.20, 11.90], availability of growth monitoring equipment [AOR = 4.44; CI: 1.97, 9.98], those who had lesser workload (saw less than 25 children’s per day) [AOR = 3.02; CI: 1.16, 7.86], those who had good knowledge [AOR = 4.60; CI: 2.06, 10.31] and favorable attitude [AOR = 2.58; CI: 1.14, 5.83] were significantly associated with growth monitoring practice. CONCLUSION: The overall growth monitoring practice among health professionals of Bahir Dar public health centers was low. Work experience, age, educational status, knowledge, attitude, workload, training, and availability of growth monitoring equipment were key predictors of growth monitoring practice among health professionals in Bahir Dar public health centers. Therefore, regular supportive supervision from the regarded body, provision of training to health professionals and fulfill growth monitoring equipment are all necessary measures to provide a better growth monitoring service.