Healthcare providers' antenatal physical exercise counseling practice and its associated factors in Southwest Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND

Scientific evidence has sufficiently proved that antenatal physical exercise benefits maternal, fetal, and child health. Despite the World Health Organization strongly recommends that health care providers advise pregnant women on physical exercise, many of them have reported they didn’t receive any exercise recommendations from their health care providers. Therefore; this study aimed to assess the practice level of antenatal physical exercise counseling and its associated factors among healthcare providers who work at Bench Sheko, Southwest Ethiopia.

METHODS

An institutional-based cross-sectional study design was employed, and 384 study participants were interviewed consecutively from January 25, 2023, to March 25, 2023. Data entry was made using Epi-Data software version 4.6 and exported to SPSS version 25 for analysis. A bivariate logistic regression was used to assess the association of each independent variable and the outcome variable, and variables with a -value < 0.25 were candidates for the multivariable logistic regression. Finally, variables with a p-value of < 0.05 were declared as statistically significant and reported with their AOR and 95% CI.

RESULT

In this study, only 36.5% of healthcare providers had an adequate antenatal physical exercise counseling practice. An adequate antenatal exercise counseling practice is more likely to occur in health care providers who are exposed to mass media (AOR: 3.51, 95% CI: 1.90, 6.48), MSc and above educational level (AOR 2.74, 95% CI, 1.15, 6.56), having an adequate level of knowledge (AOR 6.62, 95% CI: 3.40, 12.78), having a good level of attitude (AOR 3.64, 95% CI: 1.85, 7.16), and works in urban area of health facility (AOR: 3.23, 95% CI: 1.50, 6.94).

CONCLUSION

The practice of antenatal physical exercise counseling, meeting the World Health Organization exercise recommendation among health care providers in bench Sheko zone is low compared to other similar studies. Therefore, it shall be beneficial if the zonal health office works towards improving exercise counseling practice by providing education, exercise training, and media campaigns on antenatal exercise.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-025-13085-x.