Assessment of Quality of Care in Family Planning Services in Jimma Zone, Southwest Ethiopia
Background: Providing quality of care in family planning services is an important task for care providers so as to increase service utilization and coverage; however, little is known about the existing quality of care in such services.
Objective: To assess quality of care in family planning services in Jimma Zone, southwest Ethiopia.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted from January 20-24,2003 in eight service delivery points in Jimma zone. Three modules consisting six elements of quality in accordance with Bruce-Jain framework were used; observation was made during 687 clients interacting with their providers (the number of providers was 17), exit interview was made with 635 clients, and facility audit was also carried out.
Results: More than 80% of unmarried clients were getting the service from non-governmental clinic. Sixty-nine (10.9%) and 14(8.1% of those who reported problem) clients expressed dissatisfaction with waiting time and solutions given by the provider respectively. Method unavailability was the reason in most service delivery points for providing methods different from clients' choices. Most clients were not told method specific and other relevant information. Provider's special training and the time of the training have shown statistically significant difference on six and two quality of care indicators respectively. Majority of the service delivery points did not have copy of guideline and mechanism to make programmatic change based on clients' feedback; all were not supervised in the last three months prior to data collection.
Conclusion: Several constraints in the provision of the service are identified and recommendations are forwarded accordingly.
