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. 2019 May 9;16(1):50.
doi: 10.1186/s12978-019-0725-6.

Health workers' experiences with the Safe Delivery App in West Wollega Zone, Ethiopia: a qualitative study

Camilla Faldt Thomsen  1 , Anne Marie Frøkjær Barrie  2 , Ida Marie Boas  2 , Stine Lund  3   4 , Bjarke Lund Sørensen  5 , Feyisa Gudeta Oljira  6 , Britt Pinkowski Tersbøl  3
Affiliations

Health workers' experiences with the Safe Delivery App in West Wollega Zone, Ethiopia: a qualitative study

Camilla Faldt Thomsen et al. Reprod Health. .

Abstract

Background: Health workers in many low-income countries are not adequately trained to deliver pregnant women safely. In response to this, the Safe Delivery App (SDA) has been developed, which provides animated clinical instruction videos in basic emergency obstetric and neonatal care. The SDA aims to improve knowledge and skills of health workers located in the periphery of the health system in order to improve quality of care and potentially save the lives of mothers and newborns. The objective of this qualitative study was to explore the users' experiences with using the SDA and in which ways the SDA influences their work situation and their perceived ability to conduct safe deliveries.

Methods: Eleven focus group discussions and four individual interviews were conducted with a total of 56 midwives, nurses and health extension workers from five districts in West Wollega Zone, Oromiya region of Ethiopia. The data further include observations and informal conversations. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, checked for corrections and analysed using systematic text condensation.

Results: The findings indicate that health workers perceive the SDA as a useful tool, which helps them memorize and update knowledge and skills, and improves their confidence. User patterns follow the relevancy of the tool to the health workers' work situation - those who conduct many deliveries have more often used the app in emergency situations, whereas those who conduct few deliveries more often use it to improve their knowledge and to provide health education to pregnant women. Thus, the SDA is used in varying ways depending on internal and external factors such as own competencies, availability of equipment and frequency of births attended. Health workers experienced that community members showed more recognition and trust in their abilities and ascribed this to their increased confidence in assisting in deliveries. The increased recognition from communities may also be associated to a medical technology.

Conclusion: The health workers perceive the SDA as having improved their ability to manage complications during childbirth and have gained increased recognition and trust from the communities.

Keywords: Childbirth; Digital health; E-health; Ethiopia; Health workers; Maternal health; Mobile phone; Perinatal health; Smartphone; mHealth.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical clearance for the study was obtained on May 7, 2013 from the Ethiopian Oromiya Regional Health Bureau. All health workers provided written consent to participate in the study. The health workers were informed that their participation was voluntarily and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. Health workers included in the qualitative part of the study provided oral consent to participate in an interview or a focus group discussion.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

This study examines how health workers experience the Safe Delivery App. The Safe Delivery App was implemented by amongst others Maternity Foundation to which several authors are associated. The authors have critically assessed the results for bias and are convinced that the paper has not been influenced by this relationship.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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