Investigating the effect of virtual childbirth preparation education on the health practices of pregnant women: a quasiexperimental study

health practices of pregnant women affect the maternal and neonatal health and pregnancy outcomes. We aimed to determine the effect of virtual childbirth preparation education on improving the health practices of pregnant women.

A quasiexperimental study was conducted in three phases on 633 pregnant women covered by health centers in the south of Tehran in 2019. Since the number of eligible individuals were close to the sample size, sampling was not done and the census method was used. In total, 310 of individuals were placed in the intervention group and 323 individuals in the control group. In the pre-test phase, the health practices of pregnant women questionnaire were completed by women in both intervention and control groups. Then women in the intervention group participated in virtual childbirth preparation education. In the post-test phase, the questionnaire was completed again by women in the 34th to 38th week of pregnancy. We used the SPSS 26 software for data analysis and the effectiveness of educational intervention was evaluated by Generalized Linear Model.

The mean scores of participants in the intervention group in the aspects of nutrition, special health care for pregnant women and correct pregnancy information were significantly higher than the control group (P < 0.001) and the overal mean scores of health practices of pregnant women in the intervention group (90.53±9.71) were significantly higher than the control group (83.86±10.58) (P<0.001). Among the participants charactristics, nationality had an effect on the relationship between virtual education and health practices of pregnant women (P=0.03).

virtual childbirth preparation education had a positive effect on the health practices of pregnant women. When it is not possible to hold face-to-face childbirth preparation education, virtual education is a suitable alternative.