Effect of Sacral Warm Compress on Perception of Labour Pain among Parturient Mothers during First stage of Labour at Selected Hospital, Coimbatore

An interventional study was conducted to assess the effect of sacral warm compress on the perception of labour pain among parturient mothers during the first stage of labour at Sri Ramakrishna Hospital, Coimbatore. Quasi-experimental pre-test post-test control group design was adopted for the study. Purposive sampling method was used and 40 parturient mothers were included based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Every alternative sample was assigned to experimental group [n=20] and control group [n=20]. The pre-test was conducted to assess the perception of labour pain by using questionnaire and numerical pain rating scale. Sacral warm compress was applied for 20 minutes at every 1-hour interval during the active phase of the first stage of labour. The post-test was conducted using the same tool to find the effect of sacral warm compress on parturient mothers during the first stage of labour. The mean and standard deviation pre-test and post-test pain score of mothers in the experimental group were (7.13, 5.09) and 0.849, 0.875 respectively with a mean difference of 2.04. It proves that there is an effect of sacral warm compress on the perception of labour pain among parturient mothers in the experimental group (t= 3.883; p=0.001). The mean and standard deviation of post test scores of mothers in the experimental and control group were 5.09, 7.495 and 0.875, 0.467 respectively with a mean difference of 2.405. It proves that there is an effect of sacral warm compress on perception of labour pain among parturient mothers in experimental group (t=10.48; p = 0.001). The findings reveal that application of sacral warm compress is highly significant and effective in reducing the perception of labour pain among parturient mothers during active phase of the first stage of labour.