Profile of Puerto Rican Women Who Self-Reported Manifestations of Obstetric Violence, 2016-2019

Abstract

The World Health Organization (2014) defines obstetric violence as a phenomenon that occurs where women experience disrespectful, abusive, and negligent treatment during prenatal care, childbirth and / or postpartum by health professionals who attend them.  The objective is to present the profile of the sample that self-reported manifestations of obstetric violence in Puerto Rico for the years 2016-2019.  The study design was descriptive cross-sectional or prevalence study. The study population was the births that occurred in Puerto Rico during the years 2016-2019.  The study design was descriptive cross-sectional or prevalence study. The study population was the births that occurred in Puerto Rico during the years 2016-2019.  The sampling was non-probabilistic, for convenience and the sample consisted of 272 women.  The instrument used to collect the information was a questionnaire developed by Bohren et al. (2019) and adapted to Puerto Rico by the researcher. Descriptive analyses of the manifestations of obstetric violence were performed, which allowed women to be divided into the group with the most exposure and the group with the least exposure to manifestations of obstetric violence.  In the bivariate analysis, a Chi-square test was performed compared to the manifestations of obstetric violence.  The results were not statistically significant.  This shows that the manifestations of obstetric violence are similar in both groups.