ผลของโปรแกรมสนับสนุนทางสังคมต่อความกลัวการคลอดบุตรของผู้จะเป็นบิดาครั้งแรกที่ภรรยาอยู่ในระยะที่ 1 ของการคลอด

Abstract

Fear of childbirth among expectant fathers impacts the physiological and psychological health of the father, as well as their performance of the father’s role. Therefore, providing care that lessens this fear is an important nurse-midwife role. This quasi-experimental research aimed to examine the effect of a social support program on fear of childbirth among first-time expectant fathers. The subjects were 44 first-time expectant fathers whose wives were in the first stage of labor at the Health Promotion Hospital labor unit, Health Promotion Center Region 1, Chiang Mai, between March 2023 to February 2024. The subjects were selected and assigned in equal numbers into a control or an experimental group. The experimental group received social support from the nurse-midwife with routine care, while the control group received routine care. The research instruments were the social support program developed by the researcher based on House’s (1981) social support model and Rouhe et al.’s (2009) Fear Visual analogue scale. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Fisher’s exact test, Mann-Whitney U test and independent t-test. The study revealed that the experimental group had significantly lower fear of childbirth than the control group (p < .001). This finding suggests that nurse-midwives should provide social support during the first stage of labor to reduce fear of childbirth among expectant fathers.